Responses on the Ethics of Abortion
Responses on the Ethics of Abortion
#1) "Guilty? Yes. No matter what the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death; But oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!" Susan B. Anthony, 1 The Revolution 4, 4 (July 8, 1869).
#2) "[T]here were certain crimes where requests for leniency merely made me angry. Such crimes were, for instance, rape, or the circulation of indecent literature, or anything connected with what would now be called the "white slave" traffic, or wife murder, or gross cruelty to women and children, or seduction and abandonment, or the action of some man in getting a girl whom he had seduced to commit abortion. I am speaking in each instance of cases that actually came before me, either while I was Governor or while I was President. In an astonishing number of these cases men of high standing signed petitions or wrote letters asking me to show leniency to the criminal. In two or three of the cases, one where some young roughs had committed rape on a helpless immigrant girl, and another in which a physician of wealth and high standing had seduced a girl and then induced her to commit abortion - I rather lost my temper, and wrote to the individuals who had asked for the pardon, saying that I extremely regretted that it was not in my power to increase the sentence. I then let the facts be made public, for I thought that my petitioners deserved public censure. Whether they received this public censure or not I did not know, but that my action made them very angry I do know, and their anger gave me real satisfaction. The list of these petitioners was a fairly long one, and included two United States Senators, a Governor of a State, two judges, an editor, and some eminent lawyers and business men." THEODORE ROOSEVELT, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, 305 (1913) (emphasis added).
#3) "[I]t seems to me as clear as daylight that abortion would be a crime." M. GANDHI, ALL MEN ARE BROTHERS: THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF MAHATMA GANDHI AS TOLD IN HIS OWN WORDS 165 (1958).
#4) "It is to be deeply regretted that the American people...