Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes
Abortions will not let you forget. You remember the children you got that you did not get.
Brooks, Gwendolyn. A Street in Bronzeville. Harper & Brothers, 1945, p. 3.
John Ashcroft was then the Attorney General and a foe of abortion.
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.
This is an important reason to preserve the right of women to have abortions that few people make out loud in public, but is a major factor in the vast majority of the decisions women make each year to have an abortion.
At the time the United States was the only developed country where the early abortion drugs were not available without a doctor's prescription. Ironically the drugs were even safer than the previous surgical abortion procedures where were already extremely safe. But the politics of the "culture wars" at the time obstructed scientific and medical decision making at the FDA.
At the time of the debate, the average pregnant woman’s risk of death was much higher from delivery than for an early abortion.
Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was an American poet, author, and teacher. Her work often dealt with the personal celebrations and struggles of ordinary people in her community. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, for Annie Allen, making her the first African American to receive a Pulitzer Prize.
