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Pregnant Icon
(OpenClipart-
Vectors, Pixabay)

Protective Hands sculpture
(hhach, Pixabay)

Reasons Why Women Have Abortions
(unknown source; fair use, educational)

An abortion-hostile  sign
(sindrehsoereide, Pixabay)

Sad Woman
(Waldkunst, Pixabay)

Abortion Scroll
(unknown source; fair use, educational)

Uterus flips the finger
(unknown source; fair use, educational)

Floor Horror
(Mysticsartdesign, Pixabay)

Not Your Slave
(AHTmedia, Pixabay)

Abortion as an Unquestionable Right cartoon
(Clay Bennett, The Chattanooga Times Free Press; fair use, educational)

Chained Woman
(ClaraundBen, Pixabay)

Stairs Woman
(Engin_Akyurt, Pixabay)


Abortion is Healthcare poster
(Camilla Perkins, IPPF)

US Supreme Court
(Pat Chappatte, Chappatte Cartoons; fair use, educational)

Gun & Uterus
(Sketchy Mandy; fair use, educational)

Uvalde
(Clay Jones; fair use, educational)

Pregnant Icon Abortion Quotes

Safe abortion is a human right!  
(Seen on a protester's placard)

People think of abortion as ending life, but it saves women's lives, mothers' lives.
(Suzanne, 25 June 2022 tweet)

There are women who are raped and become pregnant; the problem is that they were raped, not that they are pregnant.
There are women who are starving who become pregnant; the problem is that they are starving, not that they are pregnant.
There are women in abusive relationships who become pregnant; the problem is that they are in abusive relationships, not that they are pregnant.
(Megan Clancy cited at BBC
dated 2014, accessed 25 April 2019)

Abortion is a symptom of a woman’s oppression, not a solution to it. (Marilyn Kopp)

Anti-Abortion = Anti-Woman (Seen on a protester's placard)

If you can’t trust me with a choice
How can you trust me with a child?
(Placard of a 2020 Polish pro-choice protester)


Protective Hands sculpture

The baby is a gift, given by life itself. But to be a gift a thing must be freely given and freely received. A gift can also be rejected. A gift that cannot be rejected is not a gift, but a symptom of tyranny.
(Margaret Atwood, The Guardian, posted 7 May 2022, accessed 8 May 2022)

Under international law, governments are allowed to regulate voluntary terminations of pregnancy. But they are not allowed to do so in ways that jeopardize the lives or women, subject them to physical or mental pain or suffering, discriminate against them or arbitrarily interfere with their privacy.
Human rights bodies have long acknowledged that denying women access to abortion by criminalizing the practice or by erecting other hurdles can in certain circumstances amount to cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment. Abortion bans have even been likened by international bodies to a form of torture.
(The Guardian, posted  and accessed 7 September 2021)

The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman's life, to her well-being and dignity. It is a decision she must make for herself. When Government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg)

Pie chart shows the reasons why women have abortions, all of them basically being that it is none of your business

"My body, my choice."
(Feminist slogan affirming her rights over her body and for birth control, reproductive health, abortion)

A recent poll found 70% of Americans think abortion is a choice that should be left to a woman and her doctor, and polling over time has shown support for legal abortion has changed little since Roe v Wade was decided. Only a small minority think abortion should be completely illegal. (The Guardian, posted and accessed 4 May 2022)

Access to easy, free contraception is linked to hugely reduced abortion rates.
(See Alyssa Milano, 9m5s to 9m55s, posted 3 May 2022, accessed 8 May 2022)

I consider myself pro-choice. I don't believe either conception or birth are binary switches.
Clearly a single cell organism, with no brain, isn't a human in the same way you or I are. They have less humanity than a moth. The same can't be said at 9 months.
But this is all academic. Late-term abortions are not contraception.
Pregnancies that go that far are almost certainly wanted. The kids likely already have names and toys.
Typically something horrible has happened, and the mother is the best person to decide what to do.
(Alex Yates, 3 September 2021 tweets)

A graphic of a wire coathanger. It is within a traffic-type sign, a red circle with a red diagonal line across it. The meaning is 'No Coathangers'.

An abortion-hostile sign.
The wire clothes hanger is a symbol for the reproductive rights movement.
Abortion-hostile societies, where abortion is technically legal but reviled, do not stop abortions.
Abortion bans do not stop abortions.
Women turn to unsafe DIY methods such as coat hangers (safer are abortion pills, if available).
Women die (and may risk prison).
Further, USA women are 14x more likely to die in birth than via legal abortion.
So abortion hostility and bans are not at all pro-life.


You can't ban abortion
You can only ban safe abortion
(Seen on a protester's placard)

Out there in the real world [when abortions are banned]... we know from experience abortions will still happen, whether they are outlawed or not – by some accounts, pretty much the same number of abortions. But illegal abortions will mean that many more women will die from the procedure, which is a funny way of being “pro-life”.
(Marina Hyde, The Guardian, posted and accessed 3 May 2022)

History tells us there is no way to ban abortion – only safe access to abortion. Women will always resort to dangerous methods and backstreet clinics to terminate unwanted pregnancies if there is no other way and some will lose their lives as a result. Restricting access to abortion is associated with higher infant and maternal mortality...
(The Guardian, posted and accessed 8 May 2022)

Research suggests that a total abortion ban [in the USA] would lead to a 21% increase in pregnancy-related deaths. (Carey Dunne, The Guardian, posted and accessed 17 May 2022)

According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), unsafe abortions kill more than 47,000 people every year, with five million hospitalised for complications such as bleeding or infection.
WHO data also shows that banning abortions has little or no effect on abortion rates throughout the world.
(Weronika Strzyżyńska, The Guardian, posted and accessed 3 May 2022)

A young woman in a white dress sits on a bench alone. Her head is downcast. A skull image is on the wall behind her, as is some blood. The image has a faded appearance apart from the blood.

Prior to 1973 [in the USA, when abortion was still illegal], abortion was so unsafe that 17% of all deaths due to pregnancy and childbirth were the result of illegal abortion. After Roe v. Wade, abortion mortality rates plummetted to less than 1%.
(Alyssa Milano, 5m52s, posted 3 May 2022, accessed 8 May 2022)


...“pro-life” (that regrettable term suggesting that its opponents are anti-life)...
(Francine Prose, The Guardian, posted and accessed 27 June 2022)

Large scientific bodies have found no evidence to suggest abortion causes increases in mental health problems. The best predictor of a woman’s mental health after an abortion is her health before. What’s more, there is substantial evidence that women who are denied a wanted abortion suffer both mental and financial harms. (The Guardian, posted 28 April 2024, accessed 29 April 2024)

Children whose parents did not want children are more likely to commit crimes. Such children are less likely to succeed in school, and are more likely to live in poverty. They tend to have lower mother-child relationship quality.
(Adapted from Wikipedia, accessed 16 May 2022)


Here is the fact that everyone debating abortion should know. There is no association between its legality and its incidence. In other words, banning abortion does not stop the practice; it merely makes it more dangerous. The abortion debate is presented as a conflict between the rights of embryos and the rights of women... But once you grasp the fact that legalising women’s reproductive rights does not raise the incidence of induced abortions, only one issue remains to be debated. Should they be legal and safe or illegal and dangerous? Hmmm, tough question.
(George Monbiot, posted 13 January 2016, accessed 9 May 2022)


Scroll that says 'He who hath not a uterus should just STFU!!! - Fallopians 13:13'    A graphic of a uterus where the left fallopian tube is flipping the middle finger

It [Catholicism's anti-abortion teaching] taught me my reproductive system was something I should be afraid of, that it could have negative consequences for my life. I saw: ‘there will be no sympathy for you. And anyone that you talk to about this poses a risk.’
(Maggie Mayhem, quoted in The Guardian, posted 7 May 2022, accessed 8 May 2022)


On the same day that prominent columnists were telling people to calm down – and less than 48 hours after the leaked supreme court opinion – Republicans in Louisiana advanced a bill that would redefine personhood to begin at the moment of fertilization and make abortion a crime of murder. Yes, you read that right: the moment of fertilization. I’m sure the people involved in drafting this law have no idea about how reproduction actually works (they like controlling female bodies, not learning about them), but between one-third and one-half of all fertilized eggs never fully implant. Which means someone in Louisiana needs to arrest God – he’s responsible for a hell of a lot of abortions!
(Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian, posted 7 May 2022, accessed 8 May 2022)


PWP's notes from 'But God Didn’t Say That: Religious Community Members Talk God and Abortion' (Samantha Bee, YouTube, posted 4 February 2022, accessed 10 February 2022):-
  • Did God outlaw abortion? God didn’t. God’s actually pretty chill.
  • Judaism doesn't ban abortion. In fact, it is required if the mother's life is in danger. The Talmud says that for the first 40 days [6 weeks] the foetus is mere water.
  • Islam doesn't ban abortion. The Quran says that at 120 days [17 weeks] the soul enters the body of the foetus.
  • Nowhere in Christianity’s New Testament is abortion banned. 56% of Catholics say that abortion should be legal in all or most cases; 68% do not believe Roe vs. Wade should be struck down.
  • Conclusion: The religious right use abortion laws to uphold patriarchy. Keep your theology off my biology.
A horror scene of a disfigured woman lying on a kitchen floor in a pool of blood. A small teddy bear is next to her.

Nobody likes abortion, even when safe and legal. It’s not what any woman would choose for a happy time on Saturday night. But nobody likes women bleeding to death on the bathroom floor from illegal abortions either. What to do?
Perhaps a different way of approaching the question would be to ask: What kind of country do you want to live in? One in which every individual is free to make decisions concerning his or her health and body, or one in which half the population is free and the other half is enslaved?
(Margaret Atwood, The Guardian, posted 7 May 2022, accessed 8 May 2022)

I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it a thousand times: The treatment for an ectopic pregnancy, a septic uterus, or a miscarriage that your body won’t release is abortion. If you can’t get those abortions, you die. You. Die. (Andrea Junker, 24 June 2022 tweet)

Any woman who's had more than one period is a serial killer.
(George Carlin, explaining the view of hardcore anti-abortionists, 5m32s [or 5m7s for more context], posted 2 December 2017, accessed 5 September 2021)

When people are coerced into carrying a pregnancy to term, that comes with risks, and those risks aren’t equally borne because of inequities built into our system. Black and Indigenous folks in particular are more likely to experience mortality.
(Indra Lusero, director of Elephant Circle, a birth justice organization, quoted in The Guardian, posted and accessed 25 June 2022)


Graffiti print on a concrete wall says in bold pink, "I'm Not Your Slave"

No one is forcing women to have abortions. No one either should force them to undergo childbirth. Enforce childbirth if you wish but at least call that enforcing by what it is. It is slavery: the claim to own and control another’s body, and to profit by that claim.
(Margaret Atwood, The Guardian, posted 7 May 2022, accessed 8 May 2022)

When abortion is illegal, women die. Forced motherhood is female enslavement.
(Luna Hernandez of Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, in The Guardian, posted 14, accessed 15 May 2022)

Katha Pollitt noted in her 2015 book on abortion that 16% of women have experienced “reproductive coercion” in which a male partner uses threats or violence to override their reproductive choice and 9% have experienced “‘birth control sabotage’, a male partner who disposed of her pills, poked holes in condoms, or prevented her from getting contraception”. One of the arguments for why abortion should be an unrestricted right is: violations resulting in conception needs to be counterbalanced by choices over consequences. (Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, posted and accessed 19 March 2021)

And if the state is very fond of babies, why not honour the women who have the most babies by respecting them and lifting them out of poverty? If women are providing a needed service to the state – albeit against their wills – surely they should be paid for their labour. If the goal is more babies, I am sure many women would oblige if properly recompensed. Otherwise, they are inclined to follow the natural law: placental mammals will abort in the face of resource scarcity.
(Margaret Atwood, The Guardian, posted 7 May 2022, accessed 8 May 2022)

As [US] Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez noted in late September, “When the powerful force people to give birth against their will, they trap millions in cycles of economic setback and desperation. Especially in a country without guaranteed healthcare. And desperate workers are easier to exploit.” The supreme court majority pretended it was undermining access to reproductive rights because they have no significant impact, but of course the court’s agenda was the opposite: to impose the conditions that make women subordinate in rights and economic status.
(Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, posted and accessed 3 November 2022)

Cartoon 'The day abortion became an unquestionable right' has a doctor tell a partially undressed man that he is pregnant

Regulate your dicks! (Pro-choice protester placard, The Guardian, posted and accessed 30 June 2022)

Aaaarrggh!...
Aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggh...
...all jokes were drowned out with internal existential screaming: aaaarggh.
(Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian, posted 7 May 2022, accessed 9 May 2022)

Pro-lifers don't like complexity. (Suzanne, 25 June 2022 tweet)

The right to abortion, “speaks directly to women and girls, who are often in many societies not seen as people”, Mofokeng [Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, UN special rapporteur] said... The right to abortion speaks to who owns women’s bodies in society and, “who fully can decide – and benefit from that bodily autonomy”. (The Guardian, posted and accessed 14 May 2022)

1 in 4 women have had an abortion. Many people think they don't know someone who has, but #youknowme. So let's do this: if you are also the 1 in 4, let's share it and start to end the shame. Use #youknowme and share your truth. (Busy Philipps, USA actress and talk show host, 15 May 2019 tweet cited at BBC, posted and accessed 15 May 2019)

An abortion ban will result in more men committing murder. This isn't hysteria or a false panic. It's an objective truth.
Homicide is the number 1 cause of death for pregnant women. Boyfriends and husbands who don't want to have a baby will take matters into their own hands.
(Fifty Shades of Whey, 27 June 2022 tweet)

To the left is a woman in a black dress. She sits on the edge of a bath, her face down, her wrists bound in chains. There are long drips of blood on the white wall tiles. To the right in sepia, superimposed on the bathroom scene, is a man wearing a coat and hat, smoking.

It is not enough for women to have the right to an abortion – they should have the right to one without fear, harassment or shame. Otherwise, it is barely a real right at all.
(Frances Ryan, The Guardian, posted and accessed 11 May 2022)


While Marina Hyde rightly points out that illegal abortions that kill women cannot possibly be a “pro-life” stance (3 May), it’s the much wider problem of unwanted babies that is the issue. Foetuses don’t demand to be born, but born children want to be wanted, hopefully by two parents. If the progenitors cannot feel strong love, society should not force someone to give birth, which just punishes the born child with the blow of unwantedness. So-called pro-lifers don’t actually care about children.
(Monica Threlfall, London, Letters, The Guardian, posted and accessed 6 May 2022)


...abortion is an economic issue and a labor issue, as well as a human rights and healthcare issue... (Rebecca Solnit, The Guardian, posted and accessed 3 November 2022)

Abortion bans are class warfare. (Metro DC DSA, 3 May 2022 tweet)
[Abortion then becomes far more risky for those of lesser social and economic status]


Worst of all will be the impact on survivors of rape and domestic abuse. Abortion bans ally the state with violent men who use sexual assault as a means of control, by forcing women to carry the pregnancies that result from their rape to term, heaping trauma upon trauma and making them more dependent on their abusers. In some states, the criminalisation of abortion will be wielded to impose penal sanctions on these women – a breathtaking level of state-sanctioned misogyny.
(Sonia Sodha, The Guardian, posted and accessed 26 June 2022)


A woman is seated near the bottom of a simple spiral staircase. The background is red. Her face is obscured, to the side, resting on her arm.

When most people think of self-managed abortion, they think of back alleys, coat hangers or throwing oneself down the stairs; of last resorts, despair, shame. But that is no longer the reality. Today, self-managed abortion often means taking pills that are available over the counter in many countries, with little risk of death or serious complications. Other times, it means using herbs, or vacuum aspirators, like the Del-Em (a homemade suction device created by activists in the 70s), under the watchful eye of somebody experienced – like a midwife or a doula – who can advise if things go wrong.
(Poppy Noor, The Guardian, posted 7 May 2022, accessed 8 May 2022)

Medication abortion, also known as the abortion pill, can be used safely up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy. (Melody Schreiber, The Guardian, posted and accessed 10 May 2022)

Roe may be dead but medication abortion used by 54% of women who have abortions is FDA approved, safe and effective. No clinic. No waiting. Pass the word.
(Jackie Speier, 25 June 2022 tweet)

One of the issues that unites pro-choice activists is the argument for safe access to abortions. They say the discussion should not be about support for, or opposition to, abortion but instead focus on women's health.
They argue that women will have abortions whether they are legal or not, so allowing them legal access to terminations will be safer and cut down then number of women who die as a result of clandestine abortions.
Dr Karla Figueroa says that since abortion was decriminalised in Mexico City, no woman has died from having a termination. "That's the most important thing in terms of public health"...
And it is a message spreading across the region [Latin America].
(BBC, posted and accessed 4 March 2021)

Abortion is Healthcare Full Stop poster


Abortion care IS health care. It was so before this [USA Supreme Court ends abortion rights]. And it will remain so after this.
We don’t care what a far-right extremist Supreme Court that is in a crisis of legitimacy says. Your racist, sexist, classist ruling won’t stop us from accessing the care we need.
(Cori Bush, 24 June 2022 tweet; also quoted here)

I am an oncologist. I have had patients that needed to get an abortion to allow safe treatment of their cancer. Abortion absolutely is a part of healthcare.
(Noelle LoConte, MD, 25 June 2022 tweet)

The treatment for an ectopic pregnancy is abortion.
The treatment for a septic uterus is abortion.
The treatment for a miscarriage that your body won't release is abortion.
If you can't get those abortions, you die.
You. Die.
(Seen on the internet, e.g. here)

The religious conservatives who oppose these measures [reproductive rights] have blood on their hands. They are responsible for high abortion rates; they are responsible for the injury and death of women. And they have the flaming cheek to talk about the sanctity of life. (George Monbiot, posted 13 January 2016, accessed 9 May 2022)

Women in places like South Dakota, Missouri, Texas will have the exact same Abortion Rights as women in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Yeah just think about that: We just evacuated people out of Afghanistan, now we’re gonna have to evacuate them out of Tennessee? (Trevor Noah, 2022)

A cartoon showing five judges of the US Supreme Court. They have determined that it is the End of Abortion Rights, holding this declaration as a document in front of them. The five judges all are dressed as Islamic fundamentalists, in religious garb and with long grey beards. There is an American flag to the right.

And now, this court [USA Supreme Court ends abortion rights], stacked with far-right judges appointed via ignoble means, has stripped from American women the right to control our own bodies. They have summarily placed women into a novel category of person with fewer rights not just than other people, but than fertilized eggs and corpses. After all, no one else is forced to donate their organs for the survival of another – not parents to their children, not the dead to the living. It is only fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses that are newly entitled to this right to use another’s body and organs against that other’s will; it is only women and other people who can get pregnant who are now subject to these unparalleled, radical demands. (Jill Filipovic, The Guardian, posted and accessed 25 June 2022)

And as for “pro-life”... those who identify that way are nothing of the sort. How can anyone use such a term with a straight face, when they support the torture and murder of human women. (Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, The Guardian, posted and accessed 27 June 2022)

Abortion bans, Myers [Caitlyn M K Myers, an economist at Middlebury College, who has spent the past 15 years studying the causal effects of reproductive policy] argued, open up a “financial gulf” between women who are able to obtain abortions and those who are denied them.
“When bans go into effect, women with means are still going to find a way and they’re going to travel to other states,” she said. “It’s the women who are the poorest and most vulnerable who can’t get out, who can’t get away to travel hundreds of miles to find a provider. They’re the ones whose lives are going to be economically impacted for the long-term.”
About a quarter of women in states with abortion bans won’t be able to travel to other states, Myers said, adding that that group of women is disproportionately young, disproportionally poor, and of disproportionally women of color.
“It’s an inequality story,” she said.
(Mackenzie Ryan, The Guardian, posted and accessed 11 July 2022)

On a pink background, a handgun on the left, a uterus on the right. Above them, the heading: 'SCOTUS Logic'. Below them, the description: "One is a dangerous weapon that must be regulated at the highest Government level. The other is a gun."
SCOTUS Logic by Sketchy Mandy [SCOTUS = Supreme Court of the United States]

The same SCOTUS that said yesterday that states don’t have the ability to regulate guns today gave states the power to regulate women’s bodies.
(Shannon Watts, 24 June 2022 tweet)

Anti-choice campaigners have long tried to hide behind the facade of being ‘pro-life’ when the reality is that they are anything but – they are really trying to restrict women’s freedoms. Banning abortions only bans safe abortions and women will die as a result of this ruling, and thousands more will be criminalised or face continuing a pregnancy that they did not choose. (Hannah Barham-Brown, deputy leader of the Women’s Equality party, quoted in The Guardian, posted and accessed 26 June 2022)

Infant death rates in the US increased after Roe was overturned
A new study, published by JAMA Pediatrics, found hundreds more babies died than expected after Roe v Wade was overturned and more than a dozen states implemented near-total abortion bans. The increase was particularly pronounced among infants with congenital anomalies, the study notes: “[P]otentially owing to frail fetuses more often being carried to term following the implementation of abortion restrictions.”
(Arwa Mahdawi, The Guardian, posted and accessed 26 October 2024)
[PWP: So much for "pro-life".]

If the real issue was babies, then all babies would have healthcare when they get here. If it was about children, then no child would ever be hungry. No child would lack for education. No child would lack clothing. No parent would lack for formula. (A Black female church minister, quoted by Derecka Purnell in The Guardian, podsted and accessed 30 June 2022)

A cartoon that refers to the Uvalde school mass shooting. An NRA man and another human (portrayed as a Republican elephant) are looking on. They see the aftermath of the mass shooting. So many children are seen on the ground, bloody and dead. The elephant says to the NRA man, "Thank God none of them are fetuses."
This refers to the USA 2022 Uvalde school mass shooting. The man in blue is from the NRA. The elephant  man is Republican. They are pro-guns, anti-abortion fascists. (Cartoon by Clay Jones; fair use, educational)

The [USA] states that don't teach sex ed... are states where we see higher rates of unintended pregnancies. (Alexis McGill Johnson, CEO of Planned Parenthood, YouTube, 6m19s, posted and accessed 28 June 2022) [Sex education = less abortion!]

Also see:-

Abortion

Abortion Politics

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Page last updated: 27 October 2024.