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Last Updated 11/28/2005 Home Q & A How Dare You?

How Dare You?

We receive many questions from people who strongly object to our mission, philosophy or methods. Many of these questions begin with the phrase "How dare you . . ." We have used that phrase as the title of this page of our Q & A in the hope that such people will look here for our honest answers.

Not all the questions answered here begin with "How dare you," but they all share that sense of strong objection to, or even outrage about, our work. We hope our answers will, at the least, offer a first step towards greater understanding.

How dare you tell women what they can do with their bodies?

The question isn't so much "how" but "why." The "how" is simple. Free speech allows us to express our opinion, but whether or not someone chooses to listen is the key. The real question is "why"?

One major reason why we don't want women to choose abortion is because it is destructive to women physically, emotionally, spiritually, intellectually.

We also recognize, as science does, that the fetus is, in fact, a separate person. The baby has completely different DNA from her mother and often has a different blood type. When a woman chooses to abort, she is not removing some part of her own body, but allowing an entirely separate person to be killed.

In the end, we cannot force someone to choose life for her baby. Her free will and the fact that abortion is legal makes it an unfortunate option. Our goal is to inform a woman about the consequences of abortion and help her choose life for her baby. Giving life to her baby is a choice that she will never regret.

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How dare you expose children to graphic abortion signs?

We wish it were possible for children to be shielded from the reality of abortion in our culture. We endeavor to keep our public displays of graphic abortion signs away from places like parks and schools, and we set up warning signs in advance of these displays whenever possible.

However, it is inevitable that some children will see these signs, raising the concern of some parents. We respond to this concern at some length in an article in the Face the Truth section of our site:

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Do you want to return to the days of back alley abortion?

The idea of widespread and dangerous "back alley" abortions prior to the nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973 is not supported by the facts. The medical director of Planned Parenthood wrote in 1960:

Ninety percent of illegal abortions are being done by physicians. Call them what you will, abortionists or anything else, they are still physicians, trained as such;... They must do a pretty good job if the death rate is as low as it is...Abortion, whether therapeutic or illegal, is in the main no longer dangerous because it is being done well by physicians [1].

It is impossible to know exactly how many illegal abortions were performed prior to 1973 for the simple reason that they were not reported. However, records were kept for the number of women who died from illegal abortions. When a woman was seriously injured during an abortion, she went to another doctor for care. If she died, the physician would not deliberately falsify her death certificate—an act punishable as a felony—to protect the abortionist. Thus, it stands to reason that prior to the nationwide legalization of abortion, deaths from illegal abortions were reported accurately.

Illegal Abortion Deaths Chart

The graph at right [2] was used on the floor of the U. S. Senate during hearings on abortion in 1981. Compiled from statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics, it was not challenged by abortion supporters.

As you can see, after Penicillin became available to control infections, the number of deaths from abortion stabilized in the 1950s to about 250 per year. By 1966, when abortion was still illegal in all 50 states, the number of deaths had gradually dropped to half that number. And, in 1972, the year before the Supreme Court legalized abortion, only 39 women died—fewer than one per state.

The bottom line is that prior to the legalization of abortion, either there were not many illegal abortions or illegal abortions were relatively safe.

Notes

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Why don't you care about babies once they're born?

Pro-lifers have developed a nationwide support system of Crisis Pregnancy Centers devoted to helping women face both pregnancy and the demands of being a new parent. CPCs provide the financial and emotional support to these women who chose to give life. While the League does not itself provide these services, we work closely with several of these centers and refer women to them regularly.

It is also important to note that abortion increases rates of child abuse and other violent acts. Decreasing the number of abortions means that fewer children will be abused; our activism, then, helps children in this way as well.

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Why don't you stop trying to impose your religion on others?

A person does not have to believe in God to be pro-life, although the two positions are very compatible. Science shows us that the unborn child is a separate person from his or her mother, even though the mother is providing a place for the child to grow. Research of legalized abortion has also shown us that abortion hurts women and men and puts women at greater risk for a number of diseases in the short term and over time. These reasons are independent from religion and have persuaded individuals like author Nat Hentoff, a prominent Jewish atheist and political liberal to join the pro-life movement.

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Why do you want to throw women in jail if they have abortions?

Women are the victims of abortion, whether it is legal or illegal. They are preyed upon by the abortion industry when they are most vulnerable. It is the people who push her into the abortion that should be punished—the abortionists and their staff—not the pregnant women. These people perform the procedure with full knowledge of what they are doing; the pregnant woman almost never does. They know the facts of fetal development; they know it is a baby they are dismembering, not a blob of tissue, like they tell the mothers. The same punishment cannot be levied against a knowledgeable profiteer and against a scared woman. Yet some, like Anna Quindlen still assert that:

"...there are only two logical choices: hold women accountable for a criminal act by sending them to prison, or refuse to criminalize the act in the first place. If you can’t countenance the first, you have to accept the second. You can’t have it both ways."

This is the logical fallacy of the false dichotomy or false dilemma, defined by one author as when "a limited number of options (usually two) is given, while in reality there are more options." Quindlen asserts that you must either throw the woman in jail or punish no one for being involved with abortion, completely ignoring the possibility of punishing abortion providers.

The early feminists (like Susan B. Anthony) fought for the passage of laws outlawing abortion. They recognized that abortion exploited and harmed women. If the law of the land were to change again, re-criminalizing abortion, it’s the abortionists who would be punished. When abortion was still illegal, women were almost never prosecuted for crimes in connection with abortions. More often statutes allowing for the prosecution of women who obtained abortions were used to pressure women into confessing or identifying the provider by the threat of prosecution. These laws were meant to protect other women from being harmed by abortions, rather than to punish a woman who had aborted.

For more information, see the article One Untrue Thing: Life After Roe for a more detailed response to this question by a number of scholars. This issue has also been addressed on our Generations for Life blog: How Much Jail Time for Women Who Have Abortions?

Why isn't my objection listed on this page?

Some of the questions we frequently receive in the form of objections to our work may be found on other pages in the Questions and Answers section of this site, including:

Try also searching the Questions and Answers section for your question. If you do not find an answer, please contact us with your question, and we will direct you to an answer or answer your message personally.