Joyce Banda Quotes

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.

I think women have to be able to choose... sort of, the right of choice. They are the ones that have to make the decision because they're the ones that are going to decide to bring up that child or not.

Reproductive freedom means economic freedom. And that's what this debate is about.

Let's respect the dignity of women to make their own decisions about the size and timing of their families.

It's the biggest economic influence in a woman's life whether she can decide when and whether to have children or not.

I would say that reproductive freedom comes first, then violence and economics.

UN studies conducted in more than forty developing countries show that the birth rate falls as women gain equality... I believe income-earning opportunities that empower poor women ... will have more impact on curbing population growth that the current system of "encouraging" family planning practices through intimidation tactics.. Family planning should be left to the family.

Women today have choices and demand choices, choices to have kids or not and the reproductive technology thereto. And it is a fact [that] most women continue to chose to have children.

We must... guarantee women control over their own reproductive decisions.

I said on the equality side of it, that it is essential to a woman's equality with man that she be the decision-maker, that her choice be controlling.

Trying to block women from getting access to contraception or defunding Planned Parenthood is completely nonsensical from a policy standpoint.

The idea of not being able to control my own fertility genuinely terrifies me. That one mistake might change your life. That everything I am, and do, could be ended by the repeal of laws our mothers fought so hard for, that women had waited for the entire span of humanity to come about.

Margaret Sanger didn't just introduce the idea of birth control into our culture at large, she freed women from indenture to their bodies.

Legislative proposals that would enable an employer to determine whether or not a woman's insurance would cover the cost of birth control strikes women as particularly bizarre. Is the boss going to take care of the children that are conceived accidentally? Stop treating us like children. Women are grown ups.

Until women learn to want economic independence, and until they work out a way to get this independence without denying themselves the joys of love and motherhood, it seems to me feminism has no roots.

World fertility surveys indicate that anywhere from one third to one half of the babies born in the Third World would not be if their mothers had access to cheap, reliable family planning, had enough personal empowerment to stand up to their husbands and relatives, and could choose their own family size.

My own foundation concentrates on women's economic empowerment on the basis that if women have their own money and are able to support themselves, they can make choices about what happens to them in their lives, about whether they have education, whether they get married, and what happens to their children.

Abortion is defended today as a means of ensuring the equality and independence of women, and as a solution to the problems of single parenting, child abuse, and the feminization of poverty.

It's just, for me, the natural standard: a woman should be able to decide over her own body.

It is the patriotic duty of women to bear four children.

It is not because woman is lacking in responsibility, but because she has too much of the latter that she demands to know how to prevent conception.

We support reproductive rights and will stand with women and men around the country to support keeping abortion and birth control safe, legal and accessible.

If the vice president thinks it’s disgraceful for an unmarried woman to bear a child, and if he believes that a woman cannot adequately raise a child without a father, then he’d better make sure that abortion remains safe and legal.

…American women… have learned it should be for them to decide when and how often they shall take upon themselves the sacred duties of motherhood, but as law and custom give to the husband absolute control of the wife’s person, she is forced to not only violate physical law, but to outrage the holiest instincts of her being to maintain even a semblance of that freedom which by nature belongs to every human soul.

This is about celibate men making decisions for millions and millions of women