"My understanding of what free choice is for human beings is that it is a God-given right with which persons are endowed. Without choice, life becomes kind of a meaningless routine and human beings become robots. It is freedom of choice that makes us human and responsible. For women, the pre-eminent freedom is the choice to control her reproductive process. So any theological or moral argument is subordinate to women's freedom.

One of our problems in the discussion on this issue has to do with language and terminology. The 'Right-to-Life' people adopted a slogan that might be clever for a 30-second sound bite for arousing emotions. But it has nothing to do with ethical decision-making, as they would want you to believe. "Right to Life" is too simple a slogan. For one thing, it's only applicable in an over-simplified, fictitious world with one-dimensional morality."

"In the black community, we find many women with paradoxical positions-personally not wanting an abortion, but being firmly pro-choice in terms of public policy. When I worked in the National Black Women's Health Project, we did a survey that showed more than 80% of the black women we surveyed were pro-choice, but about half of them personally would not have chosen to have an abortion. This indicates to me that there is a different set of dynamics to deal with within the black pro-choice community. The reproductive choices of black women have always been challenged, from the beginning. We have a high degree of sterilization abuse that has taken place in the communities. We keep getting our pregnancies criminalized through welfare reform or drug policies. Speaking very generally, we come to it with a different textured analysis. It's not just about choice; it's really about the opportunity to make the decisions that make sense for you. But I also believe that it offers very useful lessons to the white community, about how to maintain a pro-choice alliance in the face of the diversity on the issue."

"It is ironic that those most opposed to abortion are often also the most vehemently opposed to measures that would reduce unintended pregnancy and therefore minimize the need for abortion. Prominent among these measures is full access to information concerning human sexuality and contraceptive services for all who need them, including young people and the unmarried. Access to a broad array of contraceptives would maximize the chances that at least one method would be satisfactory to an individual user. Convenient access to emergency contraception is particularly important in that a high proportion of unintended pregnancies result from non-use or improper use of contraception. However, many unwanted pregnancies also result from contraceptive failure. Even a low failure rate, for example, less than 3% annually, will result in many unintended pregnancies over a lifetime."

"From a pure theological perspective, the 'Right-to-Life' movement deems biological determinism as the ultimate value. Biology ranks supreme over all other considerations, including human intentionality. In this construct, the biological process is ordained as the ultimate god, so the embryo or fetus is endowed with divine rights that supersede all human reasons for its termination. That's wrong. And from a religious perspective, it's also heretical. It is a form of idolatry-making God out of conceptus- and that is blasphemy.

Back in 1967, when I ran an abortion referral service, there wasn't anybody around disputing what we were doing, including the Catholic Church. If a woman was Roman Catholic, we made sure that she knew the church's position before she went ahead with the procedure. Almost all of the Catholic women struggled with their decision, but ultimately decided they couldn't afford not to do it. But back then, even though abortion was not legal, we were never arrested or harassed. But as soon as the Roman Catholic Church saw that the law was going to be on the other side, they moved immediately to organize to get it overturned. In 1967, a couple of ministers and I took a resolution to the American Baptist Biennial Convention, and it passed with not a great deal of problem at all. But the Roman Catholic Right-to-Life movement and the Protestant fundamentalists moved in as an alliance and soon after conservative constituencies within other denominations joined the alliance."

Joe Speidel (continued)

"With more than eighty million unintended pregnancies annually throughout the world—almost half of all pregnancies—women are frequently faced with the choice of having an abortion or having an unwanted child for which they are unprepared. The decisions of women in this situation result in an estimated fifty million abortion procedures each year. The issue for women in many countries is: will they have access to safe abortion procedures—in fact, safer than the alternative of childbirth-or will they be condemned to poorly performed procedures carried out under unsanitary conditions?

Because of the nature of abortion services, many governments that support family planning are wary of involvement with abortion. This suggests an important role for charitable foundations—especially in helping poor developing countries. As society's risk takers, foundations should leave routine services to others and take on the controversial but highly important aspects of population and reproductive health work, including advocacy, abortion and services for adolescents."

Loretta Ross (continued)

"I think that we should reframe the struggle for abortion rights as a struggle for women's human rights, recognizing that, unless we focus on the entire woman and what's going on in her life at the time she had an unexpected and unwanted pregnancy and what's going on after she chooses to either have the baby or terminate the pregnancy, unless we see her as more than a womb that happened to become pregnant-we will never really do justice to her full needs. I don't think we have really looked at the complicated things that go on that make a woman decide whether or not to have an abortion.

I entered the whole women's rights movement through the prism of all that was happening to me personally. At 15, I had a baby. At 16 I'd had an abortion, and by 23 I had been sterilized. And so, when I think about what Roe has done for me personally, it really has enabled me to figure out what my mission in life is, which is to insure that other women don't have the horrific experiences that I had, to insure that women have real choices and aren't facing doctors or the medical establishment or the political establishment that tries to determine who does and who does not have the right to reproduce.

I am writing this book called Black Abortion, and people are always challenging me on that title. They say, 'Well, why don't you talk about black reproductive rights, or black reproductive justice?' They offer me any number of euphemisms with a title. I'm one of those people that feel it's very urgent to name the 'A' word. Let's name abortion. Let's talk about its impact on our communities. Let's not duck it, let's not hide away from it, let's not act like we're too impossibly stopped by the thought that women need the power to control what happens to their bodies and their lives. And I'm pretty clear where my commitment is. At the same time, I'm always in dialogue with black women who are anti-abortion but pro-choice, within all of our reproductive rights. That's our community. And so I'm always looking for ways to establish common ground with those women, and to really figure out how we can be together, even though we disagree.

In 1987, I coordinated the first National Conference on Women of Color and Reproductive Rights, which was held at Howard University. The anti's found these five black women from all over the country who came to picket our conference. There were close to four hundred women of color inside the auditorium and we had these five black women outside picketing us. We could have had them arrested because they were on private property. Just before the Howard University police was ready to arrest them, I went outside and talked to the protestors and said 'If you really feel so strongly against us, come inside and share your point of view.' Three of the black women took me up on the offer and came inside. And guess what? By the end of the conference, we were celebrating how much we had in common. And that was the first day. No other pickets showed up any other day. I don't think they liked us co-opting their people. And so, since then I've been persuaded. I don't know how universal this strategy is, but when you talk with people, stay in touch with their humanity, you can find your common ground. You can figure out a way to be together, even in your diversity."