Abortion Rights Quotes

“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, Unbought And Unbossed

“The "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" begins with "life", and "life" begins at conception.”
― A.E. Samaan

“Millions of deaths would not have happened if it weren’t for the consumption of alcohol. The same can be said about millions of births.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“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.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Inside The Mind of an Introvert: Comics, Deep Thoughts and Quotable Quotes

“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, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

“All you Trump fans are gonna be really pissed off when your condom breaks and your sister can't get an abortion.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, How to Defeat the Trump Cult: Want to Save Democracy? Share This Book

“Worse than aborting is birthing in instability.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“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.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“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.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“An older man who seems to be the leader of the Jesus Tshirt group says that the Bible forbids abortion in its commandment “Thou shall not kill.”
But being in the Bible Belt, people really know their Bible, and an older woman cites Exodus 21:22–23, a passage that says a man who causes a pregnant woman to miscarry must pay a fine but is not charged with murder, not unless the woman herself dies.
Thus the Bible is making clear, that a dependent life is not the same as an independent life.”
― Gloria Steinem, My Life on the Road

“Governments who manipulate population growth have two choices: making maternity pleasant, or making it inescapable.”
― Kate Millett, Sexual Politics

“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.”
― Hannah Matthews, You or Someone You Love: Reflections from an Abortion Doula

“Estaba por todas partes. En los eufemismos y las lítotes de mi agenda, en los ojos saltones de Jean T., en los matrimonios forzados, en el filme "Los paraguas de Cheburgo", en la vergüenza de las mujeres que abortaban y en la reprobación de las otras. En la imposibilidad absoluta de imaginar que un día las mujeres pudieran decidir abortar libremente. Y, como de costumbre, era imposible determinar si el aborto estaba prohibido porque estaba mal o estaba mal porque estaba prohibido. Se juzgaba con relación a la ley, no se juzgaba la ley.”
― Annie Ernaux, Happening

“Naskaristan, The Sonnet

Where no one cries of hunger,
For neighbor comes before netflix,
No one needs bulletproof backpacks,
For children come before profits,

Where women can pursue their dreams,
Without being castrated by masculinity,
Where a mother can feed her child,
Without attracting prehistoric insecurity,

Where love isn't chained to archaic texts,
For reform triumphs over rigidity,
Where all colors make the rainbow of life,
For life isn't chained to no ideology,

Where reason outshines all superstition,
Heartland beyond hateland is Naskaristan.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Insan Himalayanoğlu: It's Time to Defect

“Every woman in the world is entitled to have bodily autonomy. One only has to look at history to see making abortions illegal or harder to obtain doesn’t work. All it does is endanger women’s lives. If women are unable to obtain safe abortions, they will use dodgy quacks, buy drugs off the internet or self-abort with a coathanger.”
― Vanessa de Largie

“Laws cannot stop abortion. Laws can stop safe abortion.”
― Humanityisdiversity.org

“Professor Hex looked on the city of Amarillo and raised her arms. “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” Professor Hex laughed. “Oh my dear, dear men, you are the new Mary.” As she recited these words, the city lights illuminated her face, revealing a disturbing grin that hinted at mischief and maybe even malevolence. A sinister laugh came from the depths of her pain. “You've been impregnated by the Holy Spirit!” Her words took on a mocking tone, the resonance of her laughter cutting through the night. “You will now know what it is like to be forced to carry a child by God!”
― Melanie Sovran Wolfe, Professor Hex vs. Texas Men: Where Women's Rights and Revenge Fantasy Meet

“Holly's voice was filled with exasperation as she continued, "All because of their extremism, I have to suffer—I might go to jail and lose my life.” She shook her head and looked at the baby booties. “It's not fair, Juan. I don't practice their version of Christianity. I love Jesus, always have, and am Pro-life unless the mother's in danger or it’s something like rape. But this, these laws, they get to force me into their weird, cruel version of Christianity---that Jesus himself would hate. I did nothing wrong, yet I mean, who do they think they are? This whole thing should be between the mother and God, not the mother, the government, and God! It’s like our government thinks that they need to play God and be the judge, and push him off his throne.” Her voice grew louder, and Juan walked in and sat on the bed, knowing she needed comfort. Her inner volcano was about to spew. “And by the way, how many children, babies, and unborn babies did God kill in the Old Testament? A lot! So I'm pretty sure he'd be okay with having common sense on the issue of abortion.”
― Melanie Sovran Wolfe, Professor Hex vs. Texas Men: Where Women's Rights and Revenge Fantasy Meet

“Something in her needed this, needed him, and needed the oneness that united male and female dualities. She had been separate and alone for far too long turning her into a cold, callous creature. Making peace with the enemy was just what she needed. Forging reconciliation with her adversary proved to be the very elixir her soul had long yearned for and this made all that was wrong in the world right. God and the devil had now called a truce.”
― Melanie Sovran Wolfe, Professor Hex vs. Texas Men: Where Women's Rights and Revenge Fantasy Meet

“Holly implored him. "Juan, I had a miscarriage. Obviously, God doesn't want me to carry our baby. But now, you, you can. This is a miracle! This is our second chance. God is good, all the time! Can I get an Amen?" She punctuated her words with a little celebratory dance. “I have to call Pastor Pete with the exciting miracle. Oh wait, I wonder if he is pregnant, too?” She laughed. “Can you imagine all the men at church, pregnant? We have to go next Sunday, I have got to see this.”
But Juan, determined to make his stance clear, was unyielding. "Holly! I get to have a choice here."
"Choice.” She snickered. “Welcome to life as a woman!” Holly spun around to see him. “Our entire existence is doing things we don't want to do, starting with our first period to having the great portal between our legs that brings humans into this world…and then you men dictating what we can and can’t do. Choice. Please.”
― Melanie Sovran Wolfe, Professor Hex vs. Texas Men: Where Women's Rights and Revenge Fantasy Meet

“As Juan listened to his wife's impassioned reasoning, a new and unsettling sensation overcame him. It was a feeling he had never experienced before – a profound loss of control over his own body. For the first time in his life, someone was dictating what he should do with his own physical being, and it left him profoundly uncomfortable.”
― Melanie Sovran Wolfe, Professor Hex vs. Texas Men: Where Women's Rights and Revenge Fantasy Meet

“The placenta is not alive, and never will be. The woman doesn’t need it. It seems to me that, if a woman is a person, she has the right to remove an unnecessary organ from her body. Certainly if the placenta malfunctions, as in the case of preeclampsia, which can cause liver or kidney damage, it would seem that the woman should have every right to remove this needless organ that is affecting her health. Nobody makes a constitutional case over an appendectomy. If I seem flippant about the whole thing, it is because the legal argument that a fetus has a legal status on par with the woman to whom it is literally attached is illogical trash sprinkled with bad faith and misogyny. Fetal personhood amendments are the state writing a check it cannot cash, then forcing women to cover the bill against their will. It cannot be done in a “free” society. The Thirteenth Amendment flatly prohibits forced labor, and it doesn’t have an exception for labor that white men won’t do themselves but think is really important for others to do for society. When it comes to amending the Constitution, conservatives still haven’t figured out how to grant personhood rights to all of the born people. If you think it’s really important for fetuses to become people, then, by all means, make one yourself.”
― Elie Mystal

“But forcing a woman to undergo nine months of incubation and labor is a rather obvious violation of her Thirteenth Amendment protections. I can prove that. After conception, the developing embryo is sustained by the woman’s ovum, or egg. This is why an embryo can be (relatively) easy to create and develop in a laboratory; it has something to eat. But embryos can’t live on personhood yolk forever, so the woman’s body starts building an entirely new organ, the placenta. When fully developed, by about the end of the first trimester, the placenta will leech nutrients from the woman’s bloodstream and “feed” it to the developing fetus through the umbilical cord. Legally, we treat the placenta as the woman’s, just like any other organ in her body. She has legal ownership of it, and that’s important, because after birth, there are some options for what to do with it. Some women eat it. Others freeze it or donate it to science, because emerging research suggests that placental cells can be useful in the treatment of certain childhood diseases. Most women allow the hospital to discard it.”
― Elie Mystal, Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution

“If I had decided Griswold, it would have been maybe a three-sentence opinion: Women, being people, have a right to control their reproductive system, as men-people do, through the use of contraceptives, which men-people seem to always be able to get their hands on when they really need to fuck a prostitute while on shore leave. This right flows from the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of Equal Protection, which we now recognize includes the right to have sexual intercourse without internal reproductive consequences. We note that men-people have technically enjoyed this right to sex-without incubation for five-to-seven million years, depending on when you start the clock on anatomically modern humans. ”
― Elie Mystal, Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution

“No, what makes abortion difficult is not some fancy lawyering from the right, but the near refusal to defend it from the left. The hard sell is almost always left to women and “abortion activists,” while men scramble around trying not to piss off a diner in Ohio. I can turn over a rock on Twitter and find some person with no legal training able to passionately explain why segregation is wrong, or why the death penalty is immoral, or how “love is love.” But ask people about abortion and it’s all, “Well… I think the important thing is that women get to choose for themselves! Retweet if you agree!” Don’t get me wrong, “choice” is great. It’s a fine frame. It’s a language designed to appeal to people who have a genuinely held religious belief about when life begins, and even the word choice should remind those adherents that not everybody shares their choice of God either, and yet we co-exist. But the better legal frame is “Forced birth is some evil shit that can never be compelled by a legitimate government. The end.” Hell, if you don’t like my Eighth or Fourteenth Amendment arguments in defense of abortion rights, I could give some Thirteenth Amendment arguments. Because the same amendment that prohibited slavery surely prohibits the state from renting out women’s bodies, for free, for nine months, to further its interests. Forced labor is already unconstitutional. ”
― Elie Mystal, Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution

“Over the years, he had come to believe that he could have only a second-class opinion about abortion and that his gender deprived him of a vote on the subject. This in no way affected his thoughts or his visceral feelings, but the right to a decision belonged to women on this one.”
― Donna Leon, Suffer the Little Children

“No matter what you want to call it," Veronica said, steering clear of words like cells and fetus that might further inflame Patty, "it resides inside a fully grown woman with a life to lead. Jane helps those women lead better lives.”
― Kerri Maher, All You Have to Do Is Call

“I wish you could understand what it's like to have to stop doing something you love, something important, just because your body is made to carry children. No one else can do this for me....”
― Kerri Maher, All You Have to Do Is Call

“Chain the worms, not wombs.”
― Abhijit Naskar, World War Human: 100 New Earthling Sonnets

“I’m pro-choice because I have daughters and granddaughters who shouldn’t be held to the same male-favored laws that my grandmother had to endure. - Unions, Equality, and Kamala: Why This Election Matters to Me (Medium Story)”
― Carlos Wallace