Pro-Abortion Quotes from the Birth Control Review
1918 "The immediate dangers of [illegal] abortion,' says Dr. J. Clifton Edgar, in his book "The Practice of Obstetrics," `are hemorrhage, retention of an adherent placenta, sepsis, tetanus, perforation of the uterus. They also cause sterility, anemia, malignant diseases, displacements, neurosis, and endometritis.' In plain, everyday language, in an abortion there is always a very serious risk to the health and often to the life of the patient. "It is only women of wealth who can afford to give an abortion proper care and treatment both at the time of the operation and afterwards. These women often escape any serious consequences from its occurrence. The women whose incomes are limited and who must continue at work before they have recovered from the effects of an abortion are the great army of sufferers. It is among such that the deaths due to abortion usually ensue. It is these, too, who are most often forced to resort to such operations. If death does not result, the woman who has undergone an abortion is not therefore safe. The womb may not return to its natural size but remain large and heavy, tending to fall away from its natural position. Abortion often leaves the uterus in a condition to conceive easily again and unless prevention is strictly followed another pregnancy will surely occur. Frequent abortions tend to cause barrenness and serious, painful pelvic ailments. These and other conditions arising from such operations are quite likely to ruin a woman's general health. "While there are cases where even the law recognizes an abortion as justifiable if recommended by a physician, I assert that the hundreds of thousands of [illegal] abortions performed in America each year are a disgrace to civilization. I also assert that the responsibility for these abortions and the illness, misery and deaths that come in their train lies at the door of a government whose authority has been stretched beyond the limits of the people's intention and which, in its puritanical blindness, insists upon suffering and death from ignorance, rather than life and happiness from knowledge and prevention. It needs no assertion of mine to call attention to the grim fact that the laws prohibiting the imparting of information concerning the preventing of conception are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths each year in this country and an untold amount of sickness and sorrow. The suffering and the death of these women is squarely upon the heads of the lawmakers and the puritanical, masculine-minded persons, who insist upon retaining the abominable legal restrictions."
Margaret Sanger. "Birth Control or Abortion?" Birth Control Review, Volume II, Number 12 (December 1918), page 4.
1920 "The food situation in the world is serious enough, it seems to me, to justify an extension of birth control propaganda to include the practice of abortion. There must be a decreasing birth rate for some years to come and all means ought to be employed to bring it about if we are to avoid aggravation of all the evils of over-population ... Let us frankly admit that "birth control" means just what it says and includes both prevention of conception and abortion."
Herman Dekker, Letter to the Editor. Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 7 (July 1920), page 16.
[***] "It is a noteworthy fact that not one of the women to whom I have spoken so far believes in abortion as a practice; but it is principle for which they are standing. They also believe that the complete abolition of the abortion law will shortly do away with abortions, as nothing else will."
Margaret Sanger. "Women in Germany." Birth Control Review, Volume IV, Number 12 (December 1920), page 8.
1924 "Our second activity extends to the abolition of the Abortion law. We purpose that poor and sick women in the first three months of pregnancy shall have the right, for social and health reasons, to interrupt the pregnancy, especially when, for certain women, contraceptives have not worked."
Johann Ferch. "Birth Control in Austria." Birth Control Review, Volume VIII, Number 7 (July 1924), page 197.
1928 "What does the World League for Sexual Reform aim at? "It aims at being the headquarters of a campaign against a false sexual morality, a false morality, to which already endless numbers of human beings have been sacrificed, and which continues daily to demand its victims. "In this fight we mean to use exclusively those mental weapons and those facts, which sexual science (in the widest sense) gives us. "What is out of accord with the laws of nature and science can never be ethically right or truly moral. Where opposition exists between the forces of nature and of society (as, for example, in the population question) one must be at pains to do away with this opposition by using the conscious will of mankind to bring these forces into harmonious cooperation. "We are unable to recognize as binding the varying rules prescribed at different times by the moment. We can recognize only what is in agreement with the teachings of life and love. "The following ten points deserve special consideration: 1. Marriage reform. Wedlock must be raised to the position of a living comradeship between two people. This necessitates a reform in the marriage contract, conjugal rights and divorce. 2. The position of women as members of society. Women have not by any means everywhere as yet won the equal rights that are their due in political, economic, social and sexual spheres. 3. Birth Control i.e. greater sense of responsibility in the begetting of children. We believe in making harmless contraceptives known, combat on the other hand both abortion and the penalizing of abortion. 4. Eugenics in the sense of Nietzsche's words: "You shall not merely continue the race, but move it upward!" 5. A fair judgment of those who are unsuited to marriage, above all the intermediate sexual types. 6. Tolerance of free sexual relations, especially protection of the unmarried mother and the child born out of wedlock. 7. The prevention of prostitution and venereal disease. 8. The conception of aberrations of sexual desire not as criminal, sinful or vicious but as a more or less pathological phenomenon. 9. The setting up of a code of sexual law, which does not interfere with the mutual sexual will of grown-up persons. 10. The question of sexual education and enlightenment. "All these points have in the last fifty years been the subject of lively discussions, which have not only often fundamentally altered the whole conception, but also the whole organization of sexual life. We can in this sense speak of a sexual crisis. The old morality with its terrible sexual misery still has the upper hand, and the human prejudices and condemnation are still heaped higher."
"News Notes." Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 7 (July 1928), page 215.
"If men have any obligations in respect to beings not yet born, these obligations do not consist in bringing them into the world but in making them happy. They have for their object the general well-being of the human race, of the society in which they live, and the family to which they belong. It is a childish idea that the obligations of human beings is to overburden the earth with useless and unhappy creatures."
Quote by Condorcet. Birth Control Review, Volume XII, Number 9 (September 1928), page 260.
1930 "For those who cannot be educated, sterilization or legalized abortion seems to be the only remedy, for we certainly do not want such stupid people to pollute the race with stupid offspring. The defective conditions of life call urgently for improvement."
Letter from Norman Haire. Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 7 (July 1930), page 213.
"Birth Control and illegal abortion were the subjects most stressed. Practically every speaker referred to them, and the demand for repeal of the law against abortion was general ... The physicians spoke of the danger to women of abortions performed by unskilled quacks, who are encouraged under the present law ... General recommendations covering international study and instruction in prevention of conception, and state aid for abortion were made ... Dr. [Adelheid] Popp made the following recommendations ... Free treatment for abortions and pregnancies in clinics and hospitals ... Legalizing of abortions performed by doctors ..."
Description of the Fourth Congress of the World League for Sexual Reform, by Erna Rieman. "The Vienna Congress." Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 11 (November 1930), pages 321 and 322.
"He deplores the attempts to stop abortion by legislation and would have it made legal and open ... "When once a woman has got into her head the idea of doing away with the unborn child, she will somehow contrive to carry her intention into effect." If the doctor does not lend his knowledge and skill, it may simply mean the maiming or death of the woman through treatment by ignorant quacks."
Review of Dr. J.H. Leunbach's book Birth Control ) Abortion and Sterilization, by Annie G. Porritt. Birth Control Review, Volume XIV, Number 11 (November 1930), page 329.
1931 "Repressive legislation seems to have no deterrent effect on women who decide to procure abortions, but it has a detrimental effect on their health. It is no secret that the well-to-do classes in Western Europe, by paying the price, can have abortions performed by excellent physicians, but that the poor classes have to bear the burden of repressive legislation and suffer at the hands of quacks ... The legal complications surrounding the woman who wishes an abortion, and the physician who takes care of her force the entire proceedings underground, into the hands of ignorant quacks. Bearing these facts in mind, Soviet Russia passed a law in 1920, permitting abortions in hospitals for social indications ... By "social indications" is meant a large number of children in the family, or lack of adequate means to provide for the coming child ... The most effective method of fighting abortion is to develop better means of preventing undesired pregnancies. In our instructions for workers in the advisory clinics, we direct them to devote one or two sessions each week to giving advice on the prevention of conception."
W. Lebjedewa. "Soviet Russia Fights Abortion." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 5 (May 1931), pages 137 and 138.
"One can say of him that he is sincere, forthright, and unafraid; that he is a thorough believer in birth control, and also in legalized abortion, in other words, over a woman's right to possession and use of her own body; that in general his views on marriage and on sexual abnormalities are entirely sane; and that he recognizes organized orthodox theology as the greatest enemy of progress in the sexual as in all other fields ... I confess to a fellow-feeling with Dr. Scott in his animadversions on children, in his statement, unpopular but, I believe, true, that children break up more marriages than they bind, and that for those with important work to do they are an unmitigated liability ..."
Maynard Shipley. Review of George Ryley Scott's book Marry or Burn. Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 7 (July 1931), page 215.
"The prevention of conception is important, first of all, because it is the only practical measure for preventing or at least lessening abortion. We cannot deny that abortions under all circumstances, even when performed by physicians, are dangerous. On the basis of thirty-five years experience, I am absolutely opposed to abortion. But I am also opposed to punishment for performing abortions, as in most cases only the poor and innocent come in conflict with the law, while the rich go scot free. Moreover the percentage of cases coming to trial is infinitely small, compared to the actual number of abortions. Not the abortion itself, but the discovery is punished. "... For we have here merely the question of a woman's rights over her own body. Moreover, experience shows that when proper methods are not available wrong and harmful ones are resorted to."
Magnus Hirschfield, M.D. "My Views on Birth Control." Birth Control Review, Volume XV, Number 11 (November 1931), pages 309 and 310.
1933 "It would seem to me that while some extension of the indications for therapeutic abortion to include social, economic and eugenic conditions is justified, the aims of the medical profession and of society should be directed primarily towards the wider adoption and perfection of the preventive measures of contraception and sterilization rather than towards letting down the bars too far in the matter of abortion, with its immediate dangers, its harmful sequelae and the inherent difficulties in preventing abuse."
Fred Tausig, M.D. Review of A.J. Rongy's M.D.'s book Abortion: Legal or Illegal. Birth Control Review, Volume XVII, Number 6 (June 1933), pages 153 and 154.
|
|