John Irving Quotes

Like an animal caught in a trap, trying to gnaw off its own leg, a woman who seeks abortion is trying to escape a desperate situation by an act of violence and self-loss. Abortion is not a sign that women are free, but a sign that they are desperate.

We don’t need more ‘What if the mother is going to die’ debated, we need ‘I had an abortion because I was not ready to be a mother. It was my choice and my right. I own it. Back the f@#( up.

Listen to the pregnant woman. Value her. She values the life growing inside her. Listen to the pregnant woman, and you cannot help but defend her right to abortion.

I don't like telling people where I stand on this, although I'm surprised anybody wonders. I suppose if I say I'm pro-choice, if I make that clear, it let's the audience off the hook, then they can sort of relax. Okay, it's alright he's pro-choice then I can enjoy this.

Right-to-life groups won't fund us because we're Democrats.

Seventy-seven percent of anti-abortion leaders are men. 100% of them will never be pregnant.

Why should a woman who discovers through amniocentesis that her baby will be born with Tay-Sachs disease, for instance, that the baby will live at most two years and those two years in incredible pain, be forced to carry the fetus to term, and yet a woman who becomes pregnant through incest would be allowed to abort her fetus?

Women should have the right to choose or not to choose abortion.

This right of privacy... is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy…

Reproductive choice is a fundamental human right and we can never take it for granted. On this issue, you're either with us or against us.

I don't support abortion. I could never participate in one. But I think it would be a mistake to make them illegal again. What criminalization will do is force women into garages and back alleys, and then you're going to have two lives in jeopardy. My mom, who was a nurse, used to talk about the messes that would come in after back-alley abortions went wrong. The way to stop abortion is to deal, philosophically and spiritually, with the people who get them. And that's not something government can touch.

Woman must have her freedom; the fundamental freedom of choosing whether or not she shall be a mother and how many children she will have. Regardless of what man's attitude may be, that problem is hers; and before it can be his, it is hers alone.

At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life…. people have organized intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail…. We conclude the line should be drawn at viability, so that, before that time, the woman has a right to choose to terminate her pregnancy…. there is no line other than viability which is more workable. To be sure, as we have said, there may be some medical developments that affect the precise point of viability, but this is an imprecision within tolerable limits.... A husband has no enforceable right to require a wife to advise him before she exercises her personal choices.

Most people, I think, have accepted that it's not up to them to control other people's choices, except, it seems, when it comes to Washington, D.C., where everyone has an opinion about people's uteruses.

I will preserve and protect a woman's right to choose, and am devoted and dedicated to honoring my word in that regard.

I wouldn't be able to date someone who had conflicting ideas on abortion, no. Because it's every woman's right to do whatever they do.

We know that no one should tell a woman she has to bear an unwanted child. We know that religious beliefs cannot define patriotism.

What has been violated here is your freedom of choice, and every woman's freedom of choice, too.

A woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.

Abortion is profoundly anti-women.

A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that as many abortions as possible are performed. Their unspoken reasoning is quite simple. Abortion is the single greatest avenue for militant women to exercise their quest for power and advance their belief that men aren't necessary.

If you feel strongly about people having abortions, don't have one.

Every Democrat, like every American, should support a woman's right to make her own choices about her body and her health... At a time when women's rights are under assault from the White House, the Republican Congress, and in states across the country, we must speak up for this principle as loudly as ever and with one voice.

The first thing I'd do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.

The crowning insult [of abortion] is that this ordeal is represented to her as some kind of a privilege.Her sad and onerous duty is garbed in the rhetoric of a civil right.