Bill Clinton Quotes

Although abortion was illegal and condemned by virtually all elements of American society, it was practiced in numbers far in excess of anything that occurred after abortion had become legal. The economic and social pressure for abortion was the major driver of abortion then and has probably almost always been so.

Not all abortion opponents object to birth control, but many do believing the two practices to be morally sinful. While the abortion conflict is given more publicity there are many in America who would return to the pre 1963 era when birth control was criminalized.

At the time, condoms and other forms of contraceptives were illegal to buy, sell, possess or own. As late as 1963 a Connecticut druggist was sentenced to jail for filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms and selling them to a married couple even thought the woman might die if she again became pregnant. The Supreme Court (Griswald v. Connecticut) established that a woman had a right to control her own reproductive cycle and the government had no business interfering with a privacy right possessed by a couple. Roe v. Wade established the right to an abortion. The same moral compunctions used with abortion were, and still are used by some to oppose any form of artificial birth control. They argued: preventing a life was as serious a moral failure as taking one. Many Catholics, many evangelical and fundamentalist protestants, and some orthodox Muslims are today morally opposed to birth control and believe that the government should ban birth control as it once was in the United States.

One of the most contentious activities in all political history is a government trying to regulate the number of children which its citizens can have. When a government tries to do this, they run into opposition by some religious people who oppose birth control in general or some birth control methods (eg abortion). In addition it is opposed by many people who do not want the government involved at all in a decision that is so personal. Yet many governments, under the press of perceived overpopulation, or in an effort to limit mental retardation, have attempted such regulation and that includes the United States where 40 states have at one time or another practiced forced sterilization of people who the state believed were unfit to bear children. China and India—the largest nations of the world—have both maintained government policies and practices to control population with China making it illegal to have more than 1 child. These programs have reduced the population counts, but at a terrible ethical cost and resentment of the affected people.

This quotation is important for two reasons. First, it illustrates a typical political exaggeration about the opposition party priorities. The birth control insurance issue was far from the Republicans’ “single most important issue” with many others such as smaller government and tax reduction given much more priority. The majority of Republicans did not even see this as a significant issue. However, there were a few right wing religious extremists for whom this and abortion (which they saw as the same thing) was of the highest priority. Second, it illustrates how the radical right wing – the Tea Party – of the Republican Party sufficiently intimidated the rest of the party so that for that time, almost the entire party acted as if the birth control insurance issue was a very high priority. If the normal Republicans did not support the Tea Party ultra conservative issues, the Tea Party threatened to run a more conservative candidate against them in the Primary election—thus controlling the regular republicans including and especially the leadership. So Warren’s accusation appeared to be true based on the words and deeds (votes) of the majority of the Republican Party.

If a state or community legally decides that a fetus is a person, there are many situations where there is a conflict of interest between the mother to be and the fetus. A pregnant woman, having a single drink of alcohol, potentially dangers the fetus (called Fetal Alcohol Syndrome). Smoking is clearly hazardous to the health of the fetus (underweight babies and more infant mortality and even more SIDS deaths. A diet to keep a mother thinner may not be nutritious for the fetus, A few states and local government have started prosecuting pregnant women for their personal behavior that might be detrimental to the fetus—often the purpose is to assert the right of the state to regulate the behavior of the pregnant woman so that the state can control abortion.

Even the vast majority of fertile Roman Catholic women, who are told by the men of the church that artificial birth control is a sin, use contraceptives.

At the time, even with all the barriers that many states placed in the way, over 1 million legal abortions were performed each year.