Bill Donohue on the history of feminism and abortion of the unborn

Everyone Knows Abortion Kills

January 22, 2013

Bill Donohue comments on the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade:

“An abortion kills the life of the baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health.”

Those are not the words of a pro-life activist in 2013—those are the words of Planned Parenthood fifty years ago. So what’s changed since 1963? After all, abortion still kills. What’s changed is the decision of Planned Parenthood to float a fiction: it decided that the nascent feminist movement had to include the right of a woman to kill her unborn child. In doing so it broke ranks with the first feminists.

When President Obama invoked Seneca Falls yesterday in his Inaugural Address, he sought to call attention to the first women’s rights convention in that upstate New York town in 1848. What he didn’t say is that the organizer, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, saw abortion as another case of treating women like property, “and it was degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.” Susan B. Anthony also branded abortion as anti-women.

Pro-abortion feminists know that abortion kills. Here’s an example. Gloria Allred, the famous feminist lawyer, was once asked on TV whether it would be better if there were no abortions. She refused to budge, saying, “Not necessarily.” Yet three years later when she took the side of a pregnant woman, Laci Peterson, who had been killed by her husband after naming her unborn baby Connor, Allred contended, “The fact that there are two individuals who are dead here, Laci and Connor, that has to be the most important consideration of everything.” She got it exactly right—there were two individuals who were murdered.

Hillary Clinton upset some feminists in 2005 when she said, “We can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women.” She did not say why abortion is sad, or how it was different from any other surgical procedure, and she didn’t have to: everyone knows abortion kills.

Contact our director of communications about Donohue’s remarks:

Jeff Field

Phone: 212-371-3191

E-mail: cl@catholicleague.org