Pro Abortion Quotes

The definition of black irony is Pro-lifers killing Doctors who do abortions

No one is pro-abortion.

Abortion should be listed as a weapon of mass destruction against the voiceless.

The "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" begins with "life", and "life" begins at conception.

Give that child to me. I want it. I will care for it. I am willing to accept any child who would be aborted and to give that child to a married couple who will love the child and be loved by the child.

My argument has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

[] it is unthinkable to allow complete strangers, whether individually or collectively as state legislators or others in government, to make such personal decisions for someone else.

If the bringing of children into the world is today an economic burden, it is because the social system is inadequate; and not because God’s law is wrong. Therefore the State should remove the causes of that burden. The human must not be limited and controlled to fit the economic, but the economic must be expanded to fit the human.

The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself. This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right -- it is the very opposite. It is a deep wound in society.

In my world, you don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and be against common-sense gun control — like banning public access to the kind of semiautomatic assault rifle, designed for warfare, that was used recently in a Colorado theater. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and want to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, which ensures clean air and clean water, prevents childhood asthma, preserves biodiversity and combats climate change that could disrupt every life on the planet. You don’t get to call yourself “pro-life” and oppose programs like Head Start that provide basic education, health and nutrition for the most disadvantaged children...The term “pro-life” should be a shorthand for respect for the sanctity of life. But I will not let that label apply to people for whom sanctity for life begins at conception and ends at birth. What about the rest of life? Respect for the sanctity of life, if you believe that it begins at conception, cannot end at birth.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion.

I've noticed that everybody that is for abortion has already been born.

Adoption was such a positive alternative to abortion, a way to save one life and brighten two more: those of the adoptive parents.

In my view, the pro-life movement at this point should focus on seeking to reduce the number of abortions. At times it will require political education and legal fights, at times it will require education and the establishment of alternatives to abortion, such as adoption centers. Unfortunately, such measures are sometimes opposed by so-called hard-liners in the pro-life movement. These hard-liners are fools. Because they want to outlaw all abortions, they refuse to settle for stopping some abortions; the consequence is that they end up preventing no abortions.

Worse than aborting is birthing in instability.

Ronald Reagan once quipped, “I’ve noticed all those in favor of abortion are already born.” Indeed, all pro-abortionists would become pro-life immediately if they found themselves back in the womb.

No, I'm the human here. I'm the life at stake. I'm the one with fingernails, who feels pain. Me.

All you Trump fans are gonna be really pissed off when your condom breaks and your sister can't get an abortion.

My father despises cats. He believes them to be Democrats. He considers them to be little mean hillary clintons covered all over with feminist legfur. Cats would have abortions, if given half a chance. Cats would have abortions for fun. Consequently our own soft sinner, a soulful snowshoe named Alice, will stay shut in the bedroom upstairs, padding back and forth on cashmere paws, campaigning for equal pay, educating me about my reproductive system, and generally plotting the downfall of all men.

The lie that abortion is murder is right-wing propaganda designed to demonize Democrats. Abortion is legal all over the world because a fetus without a cerebral cortex cannot think or feel before the 27th week. According to the CDC almost all abortions happen before the 13th week.

Until the state or the church takes full responsibility for a newborn, no bill or bible is qualified to even offer suggestions on a woman's right to abortion.

Suddenly, I began to wonder: If one in three or four American women had an abortion at some time in her life--a common statistical estimate, even in those days of illegality-- then why, WHY should this single surgical procedure be deemed a criminal act?

You can't really protect women or men from their choices, so let them have their own lives and trust the process. Given the history of society's efforts to control women's sexuality and reproduction, this remained a revolutionary idea. No wonder it disturbed and frightened some people so deeply.

How can we talk about the rights of a fertilized egg when we don't care enough to see that every child is born into a stable, safe, and nurturing environment?

Why must the woman apologize for not having a baby just because she happened to get pregnant? It's as if we think motherhood is the default setting for a woman's life from first period to menopause, and she needs a note from God not to say yes to every zygote that knocks on her door.

The abortion debate is more about power and control than the fate of a zygote.

It is time to renew the battle for reproductive rights. We have been outmaneuvered, outspent, outpostured, and outvoted by a group of single-issue activists. It has taken them nearly two decades to turn back the principles of Roe. Let's make sure it takes us a shorter time to replace protection for reproductive choice.

Your DNA is not you. It is more like the basic instructions for you. DNA is to a person as a blueprint is to a house.

The ship was sinking---and sinking fast. The captain told the passengers and crew, "We've got to get the lifeboats in the water right away." But the crew said, "First we have to end capitalist oppression of the working class. Then we'll take care of the lifeboats." Then the women said, "First we want equal pay for equal work. The lifeboats can wait." The racial minorities said, "First we need to end racial discrimination. Then seating in the lifeboats will be allotted fairly." The captain said, "These are all important issues, but they won't matter a damn if we don't survive. We've got to lower the lifeboats right away!" But the religionists said, "First we need to bring prayer back into the classroom. This is more important than lifeboats." Then the pro-life contingent said, "First we must outlaw abortion. Fetuses have just as much right to be in those lifeboats as anyone else." The right-to-choose contingent said, "First acknowledge our right to abortion, then we'll help with the lifeboats." The socialists said, "First we must redistribute the wealth. Once that's done everyone will work equally hard at lowering the lifeboats." The animal-rights activists said, "First we must end the use of animals in medical experiments. We can't let this be subordinated to lowering the lifeboats." Finally the ship sank, and because none of the lifeboats had been lowered, everyone drowned. The last thought of more than one of them was, "I never dreamed that solving humanity's problems would take so long---or that the ship would sink so SUDDENLY.

Teresa said that until men gave birth and put up with husbands, as women do, they should not have an opinion - let alone decide on - abortion and divorce. She didn't believe that men had the right to an opinion, much less to pass laws on the female body, since they'd never know the exhaustion of gestation, the pain of labor, and the eternal bondage of motherhood.

Roe has been a good friend, one women could count on when in trouble. We are on uncertain ground after Casey. Women, justifiably, feel vulnerable at a time so many years after their journey for reproductive freedom started.

I have met thousands and thousands of pro-choice men and women. I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion.

Abortion is an atrocity. Those who practice or praise it are either damn idiots, misguided fools, or treacherous devils.

I could feel the baby being torn from my insides. It was really painful....Three-quarters of the way through the operation I sat up....In the cylinder I saw the bits and pieces of my little child floating in a pool of blood. I screamed and jumped up off the table....I just couldn't stop throwing up....

A man’s home is his castle, but a woman’s body has never been wholly her own. Historically, it’s belonged to her nation, her community, her father, her family, her husband—in 1973, when Roe was decided, marital rape was legal in every state. Why shouldn’t her body belong to a fertilized egg as well?

If abortion is murder then blowjobs are cannibalism.

...don't kid yourself. Keep the baby - I have no other advice for you. Children are the best thing in the world.

Abortion is legal almost everywhere, not because people all over the world love to kill babies for fun, but because a fetus is not a baby.

And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

Each party has a platform--a pre-fixed menu of beliefs making up its worldview. The candidate can choose one of the two platforms, but remember: no substitutions. For example, do you support healthcare? Then you must also want a ban on assault weapons. Pro limited government? Congratulations, you are also anti-abortion. Luckily, all human opinion falls neatly into one of the two clearly defined camps. Thus, the two-party system elegantly represents the bi-chromatic rainbow that is American political thought.

In the end, abortion is an issue of fundamental human rights. To force women to undergo pregnancy and childbirth against their will is to deprive them of the right to make basic decisions about their lives and well-being, and to give that power to the state.

I cannot project the degree of hatred required to make those women run around in crusades against abortion. Hatred is what they certainly project, not love for the embryos, which is a piece of nonsense no one could experience, but hatred, a virulent hatred for an unnamed object...Their hatred is directed against human beings as such, against the mind, against reason, against ambition, against success, against love, against any value that brings happiness to human life. In compliance with the dishonesty that dominates today's intellectual field, they call themselves "pro-life.

As with Randall Terry and other anti-abortion leaders, women simply did not figure into [Roeder's] equations. If all the abortion providers were dead, the problem would be solved, and he'd never have to think about those who sought to end their pregnancies through illegal or dangerous means.

It was more like an abortion than music, but he got a wildly enthusiastic response from the crowd. Well, we're all pro-choice out here in Hillmont, after all.

I believe we do a disservice to God and probably to the pro-life cause if God is never mentioned in our pro-life arguments.

If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary. However, if the unborn is a human person, no justification for abortion is adequate.

Militant feminists are pro‐choice because it’s their ultimate avenue of power over men. And believe me, to them it is a question of power. It is their attempt to impose their will on the rest of society, particularly on men.

We don’t like the idea that a man might be severely constrained for life by a single ejaculation. He has places to go and things to do. That a woman’s life may be stunted by unwanted childbearing is not so troubling. Childbearing, after all, is what women are for.

Humanity has overcome the food chain, and having surpassed all other predators, has now turned to a strange form of cannibalism: humanity preys upon itself. We cull our own herd. We murder our own children. This is what we call “progress”.

Feminists have accepted that choice is possible when it comes to a different, difficult subject: abortion. The feminist position (and I agree with it) is that women own their bodies and therefore each woman has the right to choose to get an abortion if she gets pregnant. This is called being "pro-choice". Feminists should be consistent on the subject of choice. If a woman has the right to choose to have an abortion, she should also have the right to choose to have sex for money. It's her body; it's her right.

And yet, women keep trying. They put off the rent or the utilities to scrape together the $500 for a first-trimester abortion. They drive across whole states to get to a clinic and sleep in their cars because they can’t afford a motel. They do not do this because they are careless sluts or because they hate babies or because they fail to see clearly what their alternatives are. They see the alternatives all too clearly. We live, as Ellen Willis wrote, in a society that is “actively hostile to women’s ambitions for a better life. Under these conditions the unwillingly pregnant woman faces a terrifying loss of control over her fate.” Abortion, wrote Willis, is an act of self-defense.5

But “Trust Women” doesn’t mean that every woman is wise or good or has magical intuitive powers. It means that no one else can make a better decision, because no one else is living her life, and since she will have to live with that decision, not you, and not the state legislature or the Supreme Court, chances are she is doing her best in a tight spot.

Until the state or the church takes full responsibility for a newborn, without claiming custody, no bill or bible is qualified to even offer suggestions on a woman's right to abortion.

Abortion is... One more heart that will never beat again. Two more eyes that will never see light. Two more hands that will never touch or feel. Two more legs that will never run for miles. Two more lips that will never speak a word. One more mouth that will never know a smile.

Many millions of pregnancies—many if not most of which have each led to the birth of at least one child—were each used as nothing but a conspicuous means to a secret end called the evasion of abortion.

Sonnet of Abortion My body, my decision, Whether I choose birth or abortion. Till a state can care for the newborn, No bill is qualified to offer resolution. Instead of controlling my birth canal, Work on carving a paradigm of equality. Build a world where a newborn is a gift, Not a burden on life, dream or economy. Abolish all disparities born of greed, Strip the wealthy of their ill-gotten riches. Use all resources for collective welfare, So that status ends up on history pages. Worse than aborting is birthing in instability. I'll give birth when I need not rely on pity.

The anti-life of [Jerry Falwell] proves only one thing: that you can get away with the most extraordinary offenses to morality and truth in this country if you'll just get yourself called Reverend. People like that should be out in the street, shouting and hollering with a cardboard sign and selling pencils from a cup.

Pregnancy and childbirth are not only physical and medical experiences, after all. They are also social experiences that, in modern America, just as when abortion was criminalized in the 1870s, serve to restrict women's ability to participate in society on equal footing with men.

When pro-life advocates claim that elective abortion unjustly takes the life of a defenseless human being, they are not saying they dislike abortion. They are saying it's objectively wrong, regardless of how one feels about it.

Actually, abortion is part of being a mother and of caring for children, because part of caring for children is knowing when it’s not a good idea to bring them into the world.

If you are against abortions, don't have one.

You would almost think the people who have always opposed women’s independence and full participation in society were still at it. They can’t push women all the way back, but they can use women’s bodies to keep them under surveillance and control.

The Girl Scouts allow homosexuals and atheists to join their ranks, and they have become a pro-abortion feminist training corps. If the Girl Scouts of America can't get back to teaching real character, perhaps it will be time to look for our cookies elsewhere.

The pro-death view should be of interest even to those who do not accept it. One of its valuable features is that it offers a unique challenge to those pro-lifers who reject a legal right to abortion. Whereas a legal pro-choice position does not require a pro-lifer to have an abortion—it allows a choice—a legal pro-life position does prevent a pro-choicer from having an abortion. Those who think that the law should embody the pro-life position might want to ask themselves what they would say about a lobby group that, contrary to my arguments in Chapter 4 but in accordance with pro-lifers’ commitment to the restriction of procreative freedom, recommended that the law become pro-death. A legal pro-death policy would require even pro-lifers to have abortions. Faced with this idea, legal pro-lifers might have a newfound interest in the value of choice.

pro-choice’ is a misnomer. There is not really an issue of choice at all. It is against the law to cut short someone’s life, period. To say that a fetus is not a life is to split hairs, since all major bodily systems are in place at the time most abortions are undertaken. To say that it is a woman’s right to choose is also unclear, because it is not only her body but another’s as well. In a society that stands behind the best interests of a child, it seems strange indeed

I don't often engage in debates over abortion rights, for the same reason I don't sit down to share a meal at any table where I am on the menu. My body is not a theory or a talking point, and neither is yours.

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

We need to talk about ending a pregnancy as a common, even normal, event in the reproductive lives of women—and not just modern American women either, but women throughout history and all over the world, from ancient Egypt to medieval Catholic Europe, from today’s sprawling cities to rural villages barely touched by modern ideas about women’s roles and rights.

Abortion is often seen as a bad thing for society, a sign of hedonism, materialism, and hyperindividualism. I argue that, on the contrary, access to legal abortion is a good thing for society and helping a woman obtain one is a good deed. Instead of shaming women for ending a pregnancy, we should acknowledge their realism and self-knowledge. We should accept that it’s good for everyone if women have only the children they want and can raise well. Society benefits when women can commit to education and work and dreams without having at the back of their mind a concern that maybe it’s all provisional, because at any moment an accidental pregnancy could derail them for life.

don’t think women have the right to a self. They are supposed to live for others. Qualities that are seen as normal and desirable in men—ambition, confidence, outspokenness—are perceived as selfish and aggressive in women, especially when they have children.

The death rate for that is 8.8 women per 100,000.12 As I’ve mentioned before, continuing a pregnancy is 12 to 14 times as potentially fatal as ending it. That means abortion is always potentially lifesaving for a pregnant woman. (And getting more so, because the maternal mortality rate is rising in the US even as it is falling around the world.)

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

I'm pro-choice. But I hope that choice will be life.

I want a future abortion conversation known for its openness, respect and empathy, so instead of generating more heat, anger and conflict, I practice pro-voice.

They can’t push women all the way back, but they can use women’s bodies to keep them under surveillance and control.

If you're a pro-lifer, please remember: if life begins at conception, it sure as hell doesn't end at birth.

For too long the pro-life movement has been shouting conclusions rather than establishing facts. Staying focused on the status of the unborn brings moral clarity to the abortion debate.

I support the right of a woman to have an abortion if she really needs to have one, but the pro-choicers’ holier-than-thou attitude makes me want to puke. They’re the new Puritans, as far as I’m concerned, people who believe that if you don’t think the way they do, you’re going to hell

What can that mean except that women’s sexuality is what really defines them, not their brains and gifts and individuality and character, and certainly not their wishes or their ambitions or their will?

Ohio, lawmakers have taken money from TANF, the welfare program that supports poor families, and given it to so-called crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) whose mission is to discourage pregnant women from having abortions. (That’s right: Embryos and fetuses deserve government support, not the actual, living children they may become.)

The religious right is one of the most politically militant voting blocs in the country and the agenda is clear (a gun in every uterus). Time we stopped subsidizing the anti-abortion movement in the form of tax-exemptions.

Using an anti-abortion position to provide moral cover for pro-death practices and policies advantageous to the principalities and powers should not be confused with a pro-life ethic derived from the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.

Cruising along once again in this cesspool known as life, I realize that it is too late to make a detour. I will have to pass the anti-abortion pickets (50) outside of Planned Parenthood. Nothing gets on my nerves more than these pro-lifers. Not even astrology enthusiasts (51), Herman Hesse (52) or computer games (53). Look at these fools parading up and down! "Mind your own business," I yell. When one of these busybodies (a man, yet) approaches my car with literature, I lose control and scream, "I wish I was a girl so I could get an abortion!" Trembling with rage, I realize I'd better calm down before I get beat up, but can't resist one last taunt—"I hate the pope" (54), I yell to no one in particular.

When pro-lifers buy into the lie that one child is more valuable and worthy of protection than another because it is further along or happens to be a product of a violent and inexcusable sexual act, then we are condoning the violent slaughter of children and, like the people working in POC labs across the country, we have the blood of innocents on our hands. Abortion

There’s a reason they call childbirth labor. Making a healthy baby takes effort: It requires foresight and self-denial and courage. It’s expensive and demanding and tiring. You have to learn new things, change many habits, possibly deal with complicated medical situations, make difficult decisions, and undergo stressful ordeals. I had a wisdom tooth pulled without Novocaine while I was pregnant—it hurt a lot and seemed to go on forever. The kindness of the very young dental assistant, holding back my hair as I spat blood into a bowl, will stay with me for the rest of my life. Pregnant women do such things, and much harder things, all the time. For example, they give birth, which is somewhere on the scale between painful and excruciating. Or they have a cesarean, as I did, which is major surgery. None of this is without risk of death or damage or trauma, including psychological trauma. To force girls and women to undergo all this against their will is to annihilate their humanity. When they undertake it by choice, we should all be grateful.

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

A cell. 
An accident.
 A person who would’ve been miserable anyway. An appointment.
 A religious order.
 An expense.
 A political debate. 
Anything but a soul. “Why?” 
I don’t care who fights for my life.
 I care that they do. They aren’t sure
 When my life starts,
 But they tell me when it ends.
 My body, my rights.
 Somebody, where’s mine? 
I wasn’t going to come out 
As a different thing.
 So why am I treated 
Like a different thing?
 They knew what I’d be,

The abortion isn’t what they(conservative pro-life men of 1940s) are thinking about; they’re really thinking about sex. They’re really thinking about love and reducing it to its most mechanical aspects—that is to say, the mechanical fact of intercourse as a specific act to make children in this world, and thinking of its use in any other way as wrong and wicked. They are determined to reduce women’s normal sexual responses, to end them, really, when we’ve just had a couple of decades of admitting them.

I quickly realized that there are two main kinds of diversity—demographic and moral. ... Once you make this distinction, you see that nobody can coherently even want moral diversity. If you are pro-choice on the issue of abortion, would you prefer that there be a wide variety of opinions and no dominant one? Or would you prefer that everyone agree with you and the laws of the land reflect that agreement? If you prefer diversity on an issue, the issue is not a moral issue for you; it is a matter of personal taste.

Motherhood is the last area in which the qualities we usually value—rationality, independent thinking, consulting our own best interests, planning for a better, more prosperous future, and dare I say it, pursuing happiness and dreams—are condemned as frivolity and selfishness. We certainly don’t expect a man who accidentally impregnates a woman to drop everything and accept a life of difficulties and dimmed hopes in order to co-parent a baby. No college for you, young man—maybe you can pick up some courses later, when your child is in school.

Someone should have the right to choose Mexican or Chinese food for dinner, or where to live, or what kind of car to drive. Of course we are pro-choice on these and thousands of other things. But we aren’t pro-choice about rape. And we aren’t pro-choice about burglary. We aren’t pro-choice about kidnapping children. So why should we be pro-choice about killing them?

Even if we all decided to define personhood to include fertilized eggs and embryos and fetuses, they would not have the right to use a woman’s body against her will and at whatever cost to herself. Persons are not entitled to use one another like that: Even if I am the only person in the world who can save my child by donating a kidney, the decision is still mine to make.

The scalding rhetoric of the “pro-life” movement seems to propose the derivative claim that a fetus is from the moment of its conception a full moral person with rights and interests equal in importance to those of any other member of the moral community. But very few people—even those who belong to the most vehemently anti-abortion groups—actually believe that, whatever they say.

Many feminist legal scholars, including Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have argued that the Supreme Court should have legalized abortion on grounds of equality rather than privacy.6 Pregnancy and childbirth are not only physical and medical experiences, after all. They are also social experiences that, in modern America, just as when abortion was criminalized in the 1870s, serve to restrict women’s ability to participate in society on equal footing with men.

For some, trying to uphold such a distorted, upside-down morality is too much to bear. Frederica Mathewes-Green was a young pro-choice feminist. But after reading a physician’s account in Esquire of an abortion, her eyes were opened. “There I was, anti-war, anti–capital punishment, even vegetarian, and a firm believer that social justice cannot be won at the cost of violence,” Mathewes-Green recounted. “Well, this sure looked like violence. How had I agreed to make this hideous act the centerpiece of my feminism?

It is as if a woman has a right to vote, but the polling place is across the state and casting a ballot costs two weeks’ pay, and as if she has a right to be a Jew or a Muslim or a Buddhist, but her place of worship is a four-hour bus ride away, and before she can go to services she has to listen to a fundamentalist Christian sermon warning her that if she doesn’t accept Jesus as her personal savior she’s going straight to hell. We would never accept the kinds of restrictions on our other constitutional rights that we have allowed to hamper the right to end a pregnancy.

With the fate of Roe v. Wade now hanging in the balance, I'm calling for a special 'pro-life tax.' If the fervent prayers of the religious right are answered and abortion is banned, let's take it a step further. All good Christians should legally be required to pony up; share the financial burden of raising an unwanted child. That's right: put your money where your Bible is. I'm not just talking about paying for food and shelter or even a college education. All those who advocate for driving a stake through the heart of a woman's right to choose must help bear the financial burden of that child's upbringing. They must be legally as well as morally bound to provide the child brought into this world at their insistence with decent clothes to wear; a toy to play with; a bicycle to ride -- even if they don't consider these things 'necessities.' Pro-lifers must be required to provide each child with all those things they would consider 'necessary' for their own children. Once the kid is out of the womb, don't wash your hands and declare 'Mission Accomplished!' It doesn't end there. If you insist that every pregnancy be carried to term, then you'd better be willing to pay the freight for the biological parents who can't afford to. And -- like the good Christians that you are -- should do so without complaint.

The Bill of Life The Second Civil War, also known as “The Heartland War,” was a long and bloody conflict fought over a single issue. To end the war, a set of constitutional amendments known as “The Bill of Life” was passed. It satisfied both the Pro-life and the Pro-choice armies. The Bill of Life states that human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen. However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent may choose to retroactively “abort” a child . . . . . . on the condition that the child’s life doesn’t “technically” end. The process by which a child is both terminated and yet kept alive is called “unwinding.” Unwinding is now a common, and accepted practice in society.

This change of perspective makes it apparent that the ‘Pro Life’ or ‘Right to Life’ movement is misnamed. Those who protest against abortion but dine regularly on the bodies of chickens, pigs and calves can hardly claim to have concern for ‘life’ as such. Their concern about embryos and fetuses suggests only a biased concern for the lives of members of our own species. On any fair comparison of morally relevant characteristics, like rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, autonomy, pleasure and pain and so on, the calf, the pig and the much derided chicken come out well ahead of the fetus at any stage of pregnancy – whereas if we make the comparison with an embryo, or a fetus of less than three months, a fish shows much more awareness.

Zach, it doesn't matter which talking heads the Republicrats put up as their candidates. Either way you're voting to maintain the status quo. Is that what you want?" "Ummm...." "Are you pro-choice?" "Sure, I guess." Abortion's not something a gay man has to think about often. "And you must be in favour of allowing gays to marry?" "Of course." But I'd have to be dating someone first, right? "And you believe in the decriminalization of marijuana?" "I suppose." There was no way i was going to to argue with a man who sold bongs for a living on that one. "Don't you think you should be able to vote against our out-of-control welfare state without having to vote against those basic rights? Basic rights which should be protected by our constitution?" "Well-" "Have you even read the constitution, Zach?" "I don't think so," I admitted in surprise. He shook his head at me. "Neither has the president, Zach. Think about that." He left a stack of pamphlets on the counter and headed for Ruby's. It was going to be a long campaign season.