Pro-choice is a belief that everyone has the right to decide what they do with their body, including having the choice of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. Numerous notable personalities and influential figures advocate for this belief and have voiced their personal views and beliefs on the matter. Hereunder is a collection of some of the powerful quotes expressed by them:
1. “No woman can call herself free who does not control her own body.” – Margaret Sanger
2. “If it was a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” – Todd Akin
3. “No woman 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
4. “When our government has the power to deny legal rights and due process to one vulnerable group, everyone’s rights are at risk.” – Alan Ball
5. “I feel that decisions about whether to choose adoption, end a pregnancy, or raise a child must be left to the woman and her family to determine what’s best for them.” – Jennifer Granholm
6. “I cannot understand anti-abortion arguments that center on the sanctity of life. As a species, we’ve fairly comprehensively demonstrated that we don’t believe in the sanctity of life. The shrugging acceptance of war, famine, epidemic, pain, and lifelong, grinding poverty show us that, whatever we tell ourselves, we’ve made only the most feeble of efforts to really treat human life as sacred.” – Caitlin Moran
7. “Abortion rights are a reaffirmation of the right of a woman to be a person under the law, not merely a womb.” – Betty Friedan
8. “We’ve been fighting for a long time for the right to define our own lives instead of having them pre-packaged by others-a fight not likely to be completed in anyone’s lifetime.” – Ellen Willis
9. “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” – Florynce R. Kennedy
10. “Every child should be a wanted child. If that means fewer children, so be it.” – Nafis Sadik
11. “Everyone has the right to their own body, their own reproductive system, their own decision-making process.” – Cecile Richards
12. “In an ideal world, it would be great if [pro-lifers] hadn’t been so blind to what was going on with the baby’s mother.” – Laura Bush
13. “I do not believe that just because you’re opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, most people who claim to be pro-life are not pro-life. They are pro-birth. Being pro-life means you are for all forms of life, which includes being against war and being against capital punishment.” – Sister Joan Chittister
14. “Our bodies, our lives, our rights, our future. Not yours, not his, not hers, not theirs.” – Upworthy
15. “Our choice is not between a cruel policy of expulsion and a humane policy of welcome. Our alternative, repeatedly practiced in the past and clearly available now, is admission on the basis of quotas.” – Daniel P. Moynihan
16. “I don’t understand the war on women’s health.” – Mindy Kaling
17. “The prayer of the agnostic: ‘Oh God, if there is a God, save my soul if I have a soul.’” – Ernest Renan
18. “I believe in the right to life. I believe every life is precious.” – Rand Paul
19. “The beginning of life is not entitled to the protections of personhood.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
20. “Under the cloud-less skies of the Arizona desert, there is not one abortion clinic that will not aggressively defend its patients from the anti-choice fanatics who try to prevent women from freely accessing the services they have a constitutional right to receive.” – David N. O’Steen
These quotes highlight the essence of pro-choice stance, which is about giving each and every woman the right to control her own body, her reproductive decisions, and thereby her own fate. The quotes vary from stark reflections of social reality, to an analysis of the political environment surrounding the issue. All these quotes serve as reminders that everyone deserves a choice when it concerns their own body, life, and future.