Neal Shusterman Quotes
Which is worse, Risa often wondered, to have tens of thousands of babies that no one wanted or to silently make then go away before they were even born
Shusterman, Neal. Unwind. Simon & Schuster, 2007.
This was the traditional Jewish view of abortion and infanticide. It is the view of the Orthodox Jews of today, but the larger body of Reform Jews, like many Protestant sects, do not equate abortion to murder or infanticide.
In most parts of the country, if the legislators did not carve out the exceptions for rape incest and danger to the life of the mother, they would lose the majority of their support as most Americans who oppose the freedom of abortion that existed after Roe v. Wade, but really do not view abortion in the early trimester as murder. They just think that the regulation should be greater than it is.
The term had no medical meaning and had never been used in medical literature or to describe any abortion procedure.
At the time, condoms and other forms of contraceptives were illegal to buy, sell, possess or own. As late as 1963 a Connecticut druggist was sentenced to jail for filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms and selling them to a married couple even thought the woman might die if she again became pregnant. The Supreme Court (Griswald v. Connecticut) established that a woman had a right to control her own reproductive cycle and the government had no business interfering with a privacy right possessed by a couple. Roe v. Wade established the right to an abortion. The same moral compunctions used with abortion were, and still are used by some to oppose any form of artificial birth control. They argued: preventing a life was as serious a moral failure as taking one. Many Catholics, many evangelical and fundamentalist protestants, and some orthodox Muslims are today morally opposed to birth control and believe that the government should ban birth control as it once was in the United States.
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.
Neal Shusterman is an American writer of young-adult fiction. He won the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for his book Challenger Deep.
