Shirley MacLaine Quotes

Italian women have been relatively inactive in political affairs. It took issues like abortion and contraception to galvanize Italian women into political activism. 50,000 women marched in this demonstration. Even though Italy is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and the Vatican is a major opponent of birth control and abortion, both soon become legal in Catholic Italy despite the opposition of the Vatican.

This quotation is one of the best examples of political flip flopping and expedience. The quotation taken by itself is not unusual and is the same position as political candidates in Massachusetts have taken for years regardless of political party. Romney was then running for the Senate—a race that he lost. Later he ran for Governor on the same position and won. However in 2008, he decided to run for the Republican nomination for the Presidency. However, at that time, the Christian Religious Right had sufficient clout within the Republican party that no one with Romney’s position on abortion would be likely to win the nomination. So Romney reversed his position on abortion and when accused of flip-flopping for political expediency, claimed that he had had an epiphany regarding abortion. However as this quotation shows, he had always believed that the personal abortion views of candidates should NOT be brought into the campaign. However along with his epiphany on abortion itself, he conveniently now claimed every candidate should constantly declare in his campaigning his position on abortion. He also flip flopped on many other issues including repudiating the Obama Health Care reform which was modeled after the very successful program he had supported when Governor. He changed on so many issues that even the Christian Right Wing Fundamentalists, whose political positions he espoused did not always trust him, nor did most of the moderates and liberals whose views he used to claim when it was politically advantageous to do so.

The argument she made is that a woman should not be required to risk her life if she does not want to. Other than military conscription, there is no other aspect of American law whereby the society forces a citizen to risk their life.

On this issue she and her father disagreed.

The speech was given early in his career before he changed is position in 1980 to be Ronald Reagan's running mate. Bush's mother was the head of Planned Parenthood in Connecticut.

There is a very slight risk to the woman with a modern abortion procedure. There is a much greater risk to a woman who chooses to bring the fetus to term and give birth. The risk is small but it is 14 times more risk of maternal mortality (death to the mother) than with an abortion. There is also a much higher proportion of mental health problems (eg Post Partum Psychosis) for women who give birth. Most anti abortion advocates argue the issue on moral grounds and their view that we have a moral obligation not to take life. This has great legitimacy and there is a very large minority of Americans who agree with this position. However, anti-abortion advocates like Fortenberry who either are ignorant of the medical science and statistics or knows but lies about it, harm the cause they advocate for by coming across to many Americans as ignorant and/or untruthful, and they discredit the many fair and honest abortion foes.

Other society benefits that proponents of legal abortion as the constitution provides have enumerated include reducing the number of unwanted children, reducing the number of children in poverty and the health and other costs that accompany them, reducing the financial burdens of couples who cannot afford a child at the time, preventing high school and college dropouts, reducing the health costs of women who have botched illegal abortions.

Note, that like other feminist leaders of the time, she opposed abortion. However, between the economic pressures and the illegality of birth control devices and information provision, abortion was a critical decision that had to be faced by many women. Later, feminist leadership had to come to grips with the issue of who makes the decision in these areas, and placed the right of the woman to make these decisions, as opposed to husbands, fathers and government, as the highest priority. Then, when the drivers for abortion could not be eliminated, it was women who were criminalized. Feminists then fought for the right of abortion and the right of the woman to make decisions, but feminine leadership has never—in America—been advocates of abortion as opposed to the right of abortion, a subtlety that often is lost.