“Providing abortion is as much a part of medical care as delivering babies and doing appendectomies and treating sore throats. It’s an integral part of medical care….It is not something that should be stigmatized. It should be a part of general and total medical care.” —
—Dr. Millie Hanson, in 2004 Physicians for Reproductive health
“I’m concerned about it, yes, because it makes my blood boil that people try to control other people’s bodies and what they are going to do with it. And they shouldn’t. It concerns me that there is push back on abortions, … it seems like something that we should allow. You can’t walk in someone else’s shoes. You don’t know what their life is like. If they need to get an abortion, for whatever it is, financial reasons, you should be able to get it without it being impossible. “
―T, 16 year old Carolina high school student interviewed in 2019
“No matter what men think, abortion is a fact of life. Women have always had them; they always have and they always will. Are they going to have good ones or bad ones? Will the good ones be reserved for the rich, while the poor women go to quacks?”
― Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to the United States Congress, in Unbought and Unbossed
“Many of us were the unplanned children of talented, creative women whose lives had been changed by unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. We witnessed their bitterness, their rage, their disappointment with their lot in life and we were clear that there could be no genuine sexual liberation for women and men without better, safer contraceptives, without the right to a safe, legal abortion.”
― bell hooks, social activist and author of Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
“If you impose restraints that impede her choice, you are disadvantaging her because of her sex.”
― Ruth Bader Ginsburg, former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, during confirmation hearings
“Let me be clear: This won’t put an end to abortions. It will only put an end to safe abortions.”
― Stacey Abrams, Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, on Twitter
“Obviously…without the right of women and men to make decisions about our own bodies, there is no democracy. Women have always taken power over our own bodies, and we will keep right on, an unjust court can’t stop abortion, but it guarantees civil disobedience and disrespect for the court.”
― Gloria Steinem in an email response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade
“To all the Black women and girls who have had abortions or will have abortions, know this: We have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“We’ve allowed shame to be associated with a safe health procedure and it’s misogynistic and it’s racist. We have to dispel the myths and the stigma.”
“We’re going to make sure we stay the course here in Massachusetts, and ride this out. If you come here to mess with our rights or our freedoms, we’re going to take you on.”
—Governor Maura Healey, after putting in an order for 15,000 doses of mifepristone before a Texas judge’s decision to invalidate the abortion-inducing drug.
If you have some thoughts on abortion and/or the latest insult from Texas, let me know in your comments and I’ll add them to this post.