Three out of ten women in the United States have an abortion by the time they are forty-five years old. And women who need abortions get abortions, whether the procedure is legal or safe, according to the Stomacher Institute. Blaming women who need abortions through slut-shaming is not only morally reprehensible, it also is medically irresponsible.

— Leora Tanenbaum

To restrict or legalize abortion, to allow or forbid gay marriage, a legislator would need to write and pass a law, get it signed by the president or a governor, and perhaps override a veto. A Supreme Court justice need only persuade four other people. If he or she is not internally constrained by the authority of a text, he or she is not constrained.

— Michael J. Gerson

Two-thirty comes during Testifying. It's Janine, telling about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. But whose fault was it? Aunt Helena says, holding up one plump finger. Her fault, her fault, her fault. We chant in unison. Who led them on? She did. She did. Furthermore, she did. Why did God allow such a terrible thing to happen? Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.

— Margaret Atwood

Until we are willing to oppose all abortion--ALL ABORTION---then the Christian community will lack the true ethical high ground to oppose ANY ABORTIONS. The minute we concede that there is any ground--even in the so-called case of rape, incest or the health of the mother---to make a decision to self-consciously and deliberately kill a child based on our puny, finite understanding of the facts, and a cost-benefit analysis based on our pragmatic post-modern vision of utilitarian ethics, we have conceded everything. We have abandoned biblical law and granted to Planned Parenthood the legitimacy of the core argument they have advanced since Margaret Sanger founded the organization--namely, that some circumstances of pregnancy are sufficiently uncomfortable or troubling that man has the right to play God and declare his own authority to take the life of an innocent, unborn baby.

— Douglas W. Phillips

We also have to consider the many different kinds of rape we have learned about over the past few years as conservative politicians blunder through trying to explain their stances on sexual violence and abortion. For instance, Indiana treasurer Richard Murdock, running for the US Senate in 2012, said, in a debate, "I struggled with it myself for a long time, and I realized that life is a gift from God, and I think even when life begins int hat horrible situation of rape, that is something God intended to happen." I've been obsessing over these words, and trying to understand how someone who purports to believe in God can also believe that anything born of rape is God-intended. Just as there are many different kinds of rape, there are many different kinds of God. I am also reminded that women, more often than not, are the recipient of God's intentions and must also bear the burdens of these intentions. Murdock is certainly not alone in offering up opinions about rape. Former Missouri representative Todd Akin believes in "legitimate rape" and the oxymoron "forcible rape," not to be confused with all that illegitimate rape going on. Ron Paul believes in the existence of "honest rape," but turns a blind eye to the dishonest rapes out there. Former Wisconsin State representative Roger River believes some girls, "they rape so easy." Lest you think these new definitions of rape are only the purview of men, failed Senate candidate Linda McMahon of Connecticut has introduced us to the idea of "emergency rape." Given this bizarre array of new rape definitions, it is hard to reconcile the belief that women are rising when there is still so much in our cultural climate working to hold women down. We can, I suppose, take comfort in knowing that none of these people is in a position of power anymore.

— Roxanne Gay

We do not believe in murder! We believe in convenience in our careers, in our cuisine, in our kills, and in our definitions.

— Danielle Valenilla

We had, like I said before. . .we had to prevent life. We had to kill. It’s as simple as that.” —STEVE MASSIF

— Ann McElhinney

We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, killings, of wars, or of hatred... If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other?

— Mother Teresa

When we consider that women are treated as property it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit.

— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

When we were arguing on my twenty-fourth birthday, she left the kitchen, came back with a pistol, and fired it at me five times from right across the table. But she missed. It wasn't my life she was after. It was more. She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.

— Denis Johnson