The Problem - Life in Crisis

The earliest known case of abortion is said to have taken place in ancient Egypt. Ancient texts like the Ebers Papyrus (1550 BC) describe the earliest methods of abortion while abortion also appears in the written works of historical doctors and scholars. Much like abortion as discussed by scholars and politicians today, views on the topic varied. For some, abortion was not ending a life until after “the quickening,” or the moment when a mother could feel her baby move. There is evidence abortion occurred in Biblical times. These practices varied from culture to culture, and pagan believers were known to practice infanticide as a form of worship.

Abortion as population control was not uncommon. This is noted in Exodus 1:15-16 when Pharaoh was afraid the Hebrew children might outnumber the Egyptians. In response to his fears, he commanded Hebrew midwives to perform sex-selective infanticide. King Herod of Matthew 2:16 also used infanticide. By erasing a certain demographic, Herod hoped to eradicate the Messiah.⁸

The first settlers brought their laws on abortion from England, where the procedure was legal until quickening–when a woman first feels the baby in the womb. Abortion was viewed as socially unacceptable through the 1800s. Despite the social construct, colonial women procured pre-quickening abortions with the help of other women in their communities; skilled midwives knew which herbs could cause a woman to abort, and early American medical books even gave instructions for “suppressing the courses,” or inducing an abortion. Much of what we know about abortion in 18th-century America comes from the case of Sarah Grosvenor, a young woman who died from a late-term surgical abortion in Connecticut in 1742. Sarah’s case entered the legal record after the doctor who performed her abortion was brought to court for murdering the young woman and her unborn child—the abortion was illegal since it took place after quickening.³

Formal acceptance of early-term abortion changed during 19th century aligning with the laws of Victorian England. By 1910 abortion—except in cases to save the mother’s life—was a criminal procedure in every state except Kentucky. The new restrictions on abortion were caused by many factors, including changing social, class, and family dynamics in the early 19th century.³ During the mid-19th century, American physicians publicly took issue with “irregular” doctors, such as homeopaths and midwives who they believed were not safely performing the procedure.

While today’s pro-choice movement is heavily associated with feminism and women’s rights, this was not always the case. During the early 19th century, many feminists including Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were against abortion. To the suffragettes, abortion was an exploitation of women. They expressed concerns for every woman potentially involved in the abortion process. This included the mother, the baby, and the abortionist.⁸   Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, a prominent physician of her day declared,

The gross perversion and destruction of motherhood by the abortionist filled me with indignation and awakened active antagonism. That the honorable term 'female physician' should be exclusively applied to those women who carried on this shocking trade seemed to me a horror. It was an utter degradation of what might and should become a noble position for women.⁸

Furthermore, and intentionally sharing their views at that time, the suffragettes understood that abortion ended the life of a child. Alice Paul questioned, “’How can one protect and help women by killing them as babies?’”^8.

Margaret Sanger was a pivotal character in the history of abortion in the United States. Sanger founded The American Birth Control League in 1916, and this organization later became Planned Parenthood. According to Sanger, certain people were “marked when they’re born” with traits that make them less human than others. She listed these people as “delinquents” and “diseased from their parents.”^2,8

In “My Way to Peace” (1932) Sanger argued that to preserve racial hygiene, the government should enact three coercive measures: sterilize those with mental and physical disabilities, including “morons, mental defectives, epileptics,” segregate on state-run concentration farms a much broader public of impoverished and criminal citizens, including paupers, prostitutes, drug addicts, illiterates and the unemployed, and obligatory birth-control training for mothers with serious diseases, such as heart disease, in an effort to persuade them to renounce any future childbearing. Though currently known as the pro-choice movement, this program allowed no “choice.” ²

By 1930, Sanger opened a clinic in the heart of Harlem, New York where she taught that birth control, not better prenatal care, would produce healthier children. From that point on, Sanger strategically continued to open clinics in high-minority, low-income areas. See data below.

During the early forties, Margaret Sanger instituted The Negro Project with the goal of engaging African American leaders and preachers in the movement to positively socialize the concept of birth control. Hormonal birth control (the Pill, the Minipill, IUD, Norplant, the morning-after-pill, Depo-Provera, RU-486) has always had three functions. The first, often most confused as the only function, is to prevent ovulation. If the first function fails, a possible second function is to thicken the mucus of the cervix so that the sperm cannot reach the egg. The third function, a function that all hormone-based contraception has, is to thin the lining of the uterus so that the fertilized egg-- the baby-- is not able to implant in the uterus lining and is thus aborted.^2,5

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) worked to decriminalize abortion beginning in the 1960s with intentional changes to reproductive language and ended with the organization officially supporting unrestricted abortion on demand. In his book, Abortion and the Pro-life Movement, Dr. John Willke wrote that in the mid-1960s, ACOG officials and former Planned Parenthood president Alan F. Guttmacher, M.D., sought to redefine the terms “conception” and “pregnancy.” The commonly accepted understanding of “conception” was fertilization, the moment egg and sperm fuse, but the redefinition of “conception” was changed to mean implantation, the moment the days-old human being implants in the uterine lining.⁷

The change was finalized by the ACOG’s 1965 Committee on Terminology, which, according to Harvard Medical School Professor John D Biggers, accepted the new definition to read, “Conception is the implantation of a fertilized ovum.” ⁷

With birth control legal and the Sexual Revolution in full swing, abortion was just another step in the direction America and the eugenicists were taking. On January 22, 1973, abortion was legalized by the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade. Justice Harry Blackmun, writing the opinion of the court, wrote that states were already adopting the Model Penal Code. This was an extreme code that provided for eugenic abortion and the abortion of babies conceived in rape or incest. Moreover, the code was based on the sex study work of Dr. Kinsey who was funded by The Rockefeller Foundation, a major financier of the eugenic movement. Blackmun also directly cited Glanville Williams and Christopher Tietze multiple times in his arguments. Both were extreme eugenicists from the British Eugenics Society. ⁵

Evidence of eugenics can be found in abortion data.⁵

• Seventy-eight percent of Planned Parenthood clinics are in minority communities.
• According to the Guttmacher Institute, an African American is three times more likely to have an abortion than a Caucasian woman.
• Hispanics are two times more likely to have an abortion than white women.
• African Americans constitute fourteen percent of the national population and have 32% of abortions.
• For every Black child born, three are aborted.
• Eighty percent of unborn babies diagnosed with Down’s syndrome are aborted.
• The RU-486 pill was created by the same company that created Zyklon B gas for the Nazi death chambers.
• There are 45% more sterilizations among African American women and 30% more sterilizations among Hispanics than among white women.
• Not one school-based Planned Parenthood clinic is in a white-majority school.

Civil rights movement leaders shared opinions on abortion. While the civil rights movement of 1954 focused on equality between races, several civil rights leaders spoke out against abortion’s impact on their communities. Consider the wisdom of Rev. Jesse Jackson who then said, "What happens to the mind of a person and the moral fabric of a nation that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of consciousness?"  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was also known for his whole-life values. According to his family members, such as his niece Dr. Alveda King, the King family’s view on the value of all human life fueled MLK’s passion for justice, peace, and equality. MLK also stressed the importance of considering children’s lives when making decisions that impact our future when he said, "The Negro cannot win the respect of the white people of the South or the peoples of the world if he is willing to sell the future of his children for his personal and immediate comfort and safety. Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral." ⁸                                                                     

Today, many African American pro-life advocates speak to the negative impact of abortion on their community. These advocates include Dr. Alveda King, Christina Bennett, Candace Owens, Ryan Bomberger, Benjamin Watson, Toni McFadden, and Dr. Ben Carson.

Abortion became synonymous with the feminist agenda in the 1960s and 1970s. Ironically, it was two men who morphed the abortion industry into the feminist movement. These men were Dr. Bernard Nathanson and Larry Lader. Dr. Nathanson, an abortionist, rallied for the abortion industry after seeing the effects of an ill-conducted abortion on his girlfriend. Lader was a disciple of Margaret Sanger. Like Sanger, Lader believed abortion was a reasonable answer to population control. According to Nathanson, Lader employed the powerful lobbying of renowned feminist Betty Friedan to be the voice of the movement. Betty Friedan is, to this day, heavily associated with feminism’s link to the pro-abortion stance.

However, there were standout brave and prominent figures who spoke against the pro-abortion agenda. Among these advocates was Dr. Mildred Jefferson, the first African American woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School.⁸

Later in his career, Dr. Nathanson left the abortion industry and became devoutly pro-life. He turned all his efforts toward educating the public on the truth about abortion. He is best known for his documentary, The Silent Scream, which features an actual abortion procedure. Nathanson also became incredibly outspoken about the strategy and tactics he and others used to further the pro-abortion movement. He claimed that “’they fabricated statistics and polls, lying to the media who quoted these facts as if they were written in law.’”⁸

Other abortion providers have followed in Nathanson’s footsteps. They are the most powerful voices in today’s pro-life movement: Abbey Johnson, Dr. John Bruchalski, and Dr. Anthony Levatino, to name a few.

Essential court cases would appear over the decades as part of a never-ending battle to cement abortion in the national conscience and align it with the feminist movement. Abortion and feminism are now synonymous. After Roe v. Wade was passed in 1973, several pivotal cases followed to enshrine abortion as a fundamental right. These cases include Doe v. Bolton and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

The Court’s opinion in Doe v. Bolton stated that a woman may obtain an abortion after viability, if necessary to protect her health, and overruled state law in Georgia which permitted abortion only in cases of rape, severe fetal deformity, or the possibility of severe or fatal injury to the mother. Other restrictions included the requirement that the procedure be approved in writing by three physicians and by a special committee of the staff of the hospital where the abortion was to be performed. In addition, only Georgia residents could receive abortions under this statutory scheme: non-residents could not have an abortion in Georgia under any circumstances.¹⁰

The Court’s opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey upheld Roe’s constitutional right to an abortion was reaffirmed with a 5-4 vote on June 29, 1992. The ruling cited “stare decisis,” or adhering to precedent, in upholding Roe. The court upheld all the Pennsylvania abortion requirements except for the provision that a woman’s husband must be notified of the procedure. It also changed the trimester framework set out in Roe, allowing states to regulate abortions before fetal viability as long as a “substantial obstacle” or “undue burden" is not added.⁹

Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was a landmark decision addressing whether the Constitution protects the right to an abortion. In Dobbs, the Supreme Court reviewed the constitutionality of Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act—a law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy with exceptions for medical emergencies and fetal abnormalities. In a divided opinion, the Court upheld the Mississippi law and overturned Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992)—concluding that the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion. As a result, the Court’s decision returned the issue of abortion regulation to the elected branches or to the states.⁴ Justice Samuel Alito wrote, “’We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.’”⁴         

Though Roe v. Wade was overturned, and regulation of abortion is now litigated by the states, abortion advocates are determined to cement abortion into the fabric of “reproductive rights” regardless of harm to the mother or the baby. With the advent of the chemical abortion pill, interstate, intrastate, and international commerce gives women complete access to these drugs via the mail with little or no medical oversight.

Chemical abortion is a pregnancy termination protocol that involves taking two different drugs: Mifepristone and Misoprostol.

1. Generally, Mifepristone is taken first, and it blocks progesterone, the natural hormone in a woman’s body necessary to sustain a pregnancy.
2. 24-48 hours later, Misoprostol is taken, which causes the mother’s uterus to contract and expel her deceased baby.

New Guttmacher Institute research from the Monthly Abortion Provision Study shows that there were approximately 642,700 medication abortions in the United States in 2023, accounting for 63% of all abortions in the formal health care system. This is an increase from 2020, when medication abortions accounted for 53% of all abortions.  

 

There is an effective process called abortion pill reversal that can reverse the effects of the abortion pill and allow pregnancy to continue, but time is of the essence.

After taking the first pill (Mifepristone), some women regret their choice and want to reverse it.

Abortion pill reversal starts here:  The woman can call 877.558.0333 or go to AbortionPillReversal.com.

Using the natural hormone progesterone, medical professionals have been able to save 64-68% of pregnancies through abortion pill reversal. According to Heartbeat International, four thousand babies have been saved because brave women made the call.

In When Human Life Begins (March 2017), the American College of Pediatricians “concurs with the body of scientific evidence that corroborates that a unique human life starts when the sperm and the egg bind to each other in a process of fusion of their respective membranes and a single hybrid cell called a zygote, or one-cell embryo, is created.” ⁶

Technology and our understanding of preborn life have come a long way since ancient Egypt and the feminist rallies of 1973. Historically, preborn life was only thought to be present after a mother could feel her baby move. Today, via 2D, 3D, and 4D ultrasound, preborn life is visible within weeks of conception. Furthermore, modern medicine has all but eliminated any medical reason for abortion. Fetal ultrasound, fetal surgery, cesarean sections, and prenatal hospice are all advancements in maternal-fetal medicine which have aided the pro-life cause.⁸

The discussion around the pro-life vs. pro-choice issue is ever evolving. Science, in conjunction with technology, offers us a glimpse into the miraculous nature of when life begins and establish new insights for the medical community and the world every day.  We can only hope that, eventually, our country will come to recognize abortion as a civil rights injustice, as a stain on our past with no room to exist in our future.⁸ If abortion does continue to be accepted as “normal,” as birth control, as population control, humankind is facing a severely limited future.