"[W]e refuse to join [organizations like NOW] totally because they seek to solve the world's ills through the violent means of abortion. Feminists for Life consider the fanatical insistence of certain women's rights groups on abortion to be a sell-out of the feminist cause. They have sold out to the male dominated abortion industry (and it has been documented that the greatest majority of clinics are businesses owned by entrepreneurs) and to the playboy philosophy which sees women as exploitable commodities for male convenience and profit.
"Abortion is the destruction of human life and energy that does nothing to eradicate the very real underlying problems of women. The pregnant welfare mother begs for decent housing, a decent job and child-care or respect for her child-nurturing work. Instead, she gets directions to the local abortion clinic and is told to take care of 'her problem.' How convenient. Much less time and trouble than teaching her about authentic reproductive freedom and reproductive responsibility. Much cheaper than attending to her real problems: her poverty, her lack of skills, her illiteracy, her loneliness, her bitterness about her entrapment, her self-contempt, her vulnerability. After the abortion these problems will all be there and another one added besides: her guilt.
"By encouraging society to consider a woman's child as a disposable piece of property, abortion reinforces the image of woman herself as disposable property and reusable sex object-a renewable sexual resource. It is no coincidence that the biggest single financial contributor to the cause of 'abortion rights' is the Playboy Foundation. When abortion is available to all women, all male responsibility for fertility control has been removed. A man need only offer a woman money for an abortion and that's it: no responsibility, no relationship, no commitment. And there we are... recycled and used again!" --Cecilia Voss Koch

"[A]bortion is one result of the historic and deep exploitation of, and discrimination against, the female.... [W]hen this exploitation and discrimination end, the practice of abortion will also end.... It is a strange irony that other, pro-choice feminists embrace abortion and define it as a fundamental feminist right instead of seeing it as a fundamental and devastating exploitation. Such a feminist embraces and cooperates in her own oppression. Abortion, in the final analysis, works to the advantage of the exploitative male, not for the female.... Abortion is a male sexual fantasy come true." --Susan Maronek

"If women must submit to abortion to preserve their lifestyle or career, their economic social status, they are pandering to a system devised and run by men for male convenience. Of all things which are done to women to fit them into a society dominated by men, abortion is the most violent invasion of their physical and psychic integrity. It is a deeper and more destructive assault than rape.... Accepting short-term solutions like abortion only delays the implementation of real reforms like decent maternity and paternity leaves, job protection, high-quality child care, community responsibility for dependent people of all ages, and recognition of the economic contribution of child-minders." --Daphne de Jong

"How quickly a 'woman's right to choose' comes to serve a 'man's right to use.'" --Juli Loesch

"As a pregnancy counselor, I had not dealt with a single woman who thought about aborting her baby because she thought it was best. No, it was her parents who thought it was a good idea, or a boyfriend, or a husband, or a boss, or a frowning, judgmental society which was too much for her to withstand.... Do abortion clinics hear stories like these? Do they have women (whose babies they have killed) coming back to them to talk about how crazy they are now, how desperately they want to die? What is the abortionist's response to the [thousands of] women who have joined Women Exploited by Abortion[?] How much longer can women who claim that to be feminist is to be pro-abortion espouse a philosophy responsible for the severe physical and psychological damage to millions of women each year? ...[P]ro-life feminists, we must be visible, must be vocal, must spread the message that to be feminist is to be nurturers, life-givers, justice-seekers, peacemakers. We have the responsibility of letting the world know it... true feminism is pro-life!" --Judie Gillespie

"No one wants an abortion as she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion as an animal, caught in a trap, wants to gnaw off its own leg." --Frederica Mathewes-Green

"Because abortion undeniably involves a degree of physical and emotional pain, the abortion decision cannot be viewed apart from the factors that motivate it. Those factors-personal problems, social pressure, lack of support from family, society, or friends--suggest that the choice is never a truly voluntary one. It is more likely in fact that women submit to abortions, not so much because they have a choice, but because they feel that in their own circumstances, they have no choice at all.... Abortion does nothing whatever to promote social and economic justice, nor does it compensate for the lack of it." --Elizabeth Moore Sobo

"Tunnel-visioned pro-abortion feminists cannot see to help [us] develop real alternatives to abortion, programs of support for women with hardship pregnancies, a change in society's attitude toward pregnant women so that young women won't automatically think that, once pregnant, they can never attend college, never pursue a career, not go on living. Pro-abortion feminists are part of the problem--they contribute to a 'pregnancy as disease', 'fetus as cancer' attitude that turns a normal, natural function of a woman's body into something to be attacked with a curette and vacuum. Is this creative thinking? Is this women supporting women? What kind of 'sisterhood' have we wreaked upon ourselves?" --Paulette Joyer

"Abortion ignores the cause and treats the symptom: instead of suggesting a way out of the isolation mothers face, it offers a way out of motherhood." --Nancy Randolph Pearcy

"Abortion does not address the basic inequalities, such as poverty and unequal pay, that make a woman believe she cannot have a baby. It's a cheap fix that leaves the woman as poor and oppressed as she ever was, while politicians claim to have struck a blow for women's rights and the doctors go home $250 richer." --Jane Thomas Bailey

"There is an eerie similarity among the practices of sex selection of infants (through amniocentesis and abortion), infanticide, and elder abuse. That similarity is: THE VICTIMS ARE USUALLY FEMALE." --Gail Grenier Sweet

"Many feminists refuse to accept that the violent ethic of abortion is doing serious damage to women and that the proliferation of pornography and the million-plus abortions a year are inexorably connected.
"It is no accident that the greatest apologist for pornography in our culture, Hugh Hefner, is also enthusiastic about abortion on demand. Hefner's misogynistic playboy philosophy inevitably leads to the destructive, dewomanizing practice of abortion. As its core the playboy ethic is anti-woman and anti-child.
"The reality of the possibility of pregnancy and childbirth interferes with the Hefner dream of multiple partners and everlasting orgies. The Hefner playboy is incapable of relating to a mature woman who ovulates, menstruates, conceives and lactates. In fact, he's quite puritanical about the messy, dirty processes of human reproduction. He likes his bunnies 'clean' and sterile. If his bunny mysteriously gets pregnant, she can take care of that like magic with a clean, sterile abortion. The biological reality of the combined fertility of women and men which might result in the creation of a new human being must be denied. In the Hefner dream world there is no need for the commitment it would take to nurture new life." --Judy Shea

"It's time to end the cover-ups.... Women need to know the truth.... There's no money to be made in teaching women the truth--and that's why the teaching probably will not come from anyone who has money to be made from drugs, devices, and abortions." --Gail Grenier Sweet

"We deserve, demand, have a right to--can create--something better than the abortion industry's 'cure' for our unique condition of impregnability, whether that abortionist be in the back alley or the plush front office." --Juli Loesch

"In the mid-seventies, Pat [Goltz, co-founder of Feminists for Life] had the honor of meeting Alice Paul, the author of the original Equal Rights Amendment. Ms. Paul, who had known some of our earlier feminist foremothers, made it clear that the early feminists were altogether opposed to abortion. Also very much opposed to abortion, she had given her all to getting the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] into Congress. She was grateful that others were now carrying the torch but was disturbed by the new trend of linking the ERA with abortion. She related to Pat her belief that abortion would destroy feminism if it were not stopped." --Cindy Osborne

It was Alice Paul, following in the footsteps of women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who said "Abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women."

Excerpted from:

• Pro-life Feminism Yesterday & Today edited by Mary Krane Derr, Linda Naranjo-Huebl, & Rachel MacNair
• Pro-life Feminism: Different Voices edited by Gail Grenier Sweet
• Swimming Against the Tide: Feminist Dissent on the Issue of Abortion edited by Angela Kennedy
• Real Choices: Listening to Women, Looking for Alternatives to Abortion by Frederica Mathewes-Green