Tearing Us Apart Quotes

“Far from being an intruder in his mother’s womb, the unborn child is where he belongs. Furthermore, parents bear special obligations to their children, and a woman’s bodily autonomy does not justify lethal violence against the unborn.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Indeed, the view of moral personhood put forward by these thinkers would render it utterly impossible to defend equality as a moral principle. If what matters morally are out developed capacities, then those who develop their capacities the furthest should matter most.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“It is fundamentally arbitrary to allow a mere difference in the degree of development of a trait to serve as the basis for treating creatures in radically different ways…If all human beings have the same basic traits but some have developed them to a greater extent, making that difference of developmental degree the basis for treating those human beings in radically different ways is itself unjust, for those human being aren’t different in kind. Albert Einstein doesn’t have greater moral worth than Joe the plumber.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Families, communities, and entire societies become better when they treat the most vulnerable among us with love and consideration…Whether in the case of a difficult prenatal diagnosis, a challenging financial situation, or pressure to abort, no form of suffering can erase the value of the unborn child, a child who is always worthy of love and protection.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Laws that protect innocent life are a functioning government’s default position, and the burden of proof is on those who would demand exceptions. In fact, a state that does NOT aim to protect innocent life from lethal violence should be considered illegitimate. If each of us enjoys the same natural dignity by virtue of our humanity, then there is no sound basis on which a government could arbitrarily deprive certain individuals of their lives, rights, or freedoms.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Government exists to (at the very least) protect against lethal violence. The denial of personhood undergirding the defense of abortion entails another ugly position, with grave political consequences: the belief that might makes right. If we accept the framework of moral dualists, someone or some group must be able to decide which human beings count as persons. This belief means that stronger people, by virtue of their capabilities, can rule over the weaker- or the wiser over the dumber, the older over the younger, the prettier over the uglier, and so on. This view rejects a fundamental truth about human nature that government exists to defend, the truth that all human beings are created equal.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Denials of personhood to categories of human beings have been used throughout history to subjugate, oppress, and extinguish groups of people that those in power wanted to eliminate. History gives us little reason to believe that denying personhood to some human beings has ever been used to further justice or equality. In fact, in every instance it has been used in precisely the opposite way.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“A society that endorses abortion devalues the life of every single member, as it allows mothers to destroy their children and sanctions violence against the most vulnerable members of the human community. Each of us enters life dependent on our families, particularly on our mothers, and though our level of dependence fluctuates throughout the course of our lives, we remain dependent on one another. A healthy society doesn’t deny or try to eliminate dependency; it helps people meet the needs of their neighbors and bear one another’s burdens.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared to be, contingent on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign. -Mother Teresa
Mother Teresa is correct: the individual’s right to life does not depend on our consent, but the brutality of abortion is possible today because enough citizens have agreed, either implicitly or explicitly, to close their eyes to the truth about what abortion is. That truth is almost too painful to acknowledge, and many have learned to look away instead.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Abortion perverts what it means to live in a justly ordered political community with laws that protect all of us- and in a society where our laws say that some human beings don’t deserve to live, we are all at risk.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Abortion distorts science and corrupts medicine, pretending that the child in the womb isn’t a human being at all and that tools meant for healing can rightly be turned to killing.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Abortion strikes at the bond between mother and child, turning it into a conflict between adversaries and a justification for violence- a relationship not of love but of antagonism and mutual destruction.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“starting with how it encourages mothers to view their children as antagonists, how it allows men to view women as always sexually available without any marital commitment or promise of stability required, and how it allows employers and society as a whole to treat the male body as the norm and female fertility as a problem to be solved—rather than a reality to structure social relations around.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Prior to Roe, nearly every state had strict prohibitions against elective abortion, but none of those laws imposed criminal penalties on pregnant women seeking abortions; they punished the doctors who performed them.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“It’s easy to see why the Hippocratic Oath, the doctor’s gold standard of care for millennia, expressly forbids abortion: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.”4”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“In the midst of that suffering, pro-lifers have spent decades working to help women of all races and all social classes, in all types of difficult situations, encouraging them and supporting them so they can avoid abortion and choose life for their unborn children. They do this important work often without praise, yet at every turn they face harsh opposition from abortion businesses and abortion-rights activists, whose hatred of pregnancy-resource centers can be explained only by the reality that they are pro-abortion, not pro-choice.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Every abortion is discriminatory. Every time an unborn child loses his life in an abortion, it is because something about him has been deemed unworthy. He’s not treated as the equal of the adult who kills him. Perhaps the argument is that he’s too small or underdeveloped to count as a person. Perhaps a worker at an abortion clinic has dismissed him as a “clump of cells.” Perhaps his parents have decided they’re not ready for a baby or that finances are tight; he has to be eliminated because his life is an inconvenience.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“One 2004 study of women who’d had an abortion found that about two-thirds of them had received no counseling ahead of time, and only 11 percent who did receive counseling said it was adequate. Just 17 percent said they were counseled on abortion alternatives, and about two-thirds reported feeling pressured to choose abortion. A majority said they weren’t sure of their decision at the time they received an abortion.74 Some women obtain an abortion under duress from their partner, whether literal force or other coercion such as financial pressure or threats to leave the relationship.75 According to some surveys, a majority of women who seek abortion do so because of lack of support from a partner.76 “I can’t tell you how many [post-abortive black] women have fallen into my arms in tears because their significant other put a gun to their head or threatened to kill them or had someone escort them into an abortion clinic to keep them there to make them have an abortion,” pro-life leader Catherine Davis, founder of the Restoration Project, told one of us (Alexandra) in a 2020 interview.77”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Planned Parenthood bills itself as “pro-choice” and as a champion of women in need, but in reality the group prioritizes abortion. Pregnancy-resource centers, by contrast, are honest about their opposition to abortion, and they decline to refer women to abortion clinics. But they offer women real support, acknowledging their concerns about pregnancy and parenthood, and seek to meet whatever needs they can—diapers, cribs, car seats, formula, maternity clothes—to help mothers choose life. This service is especially important considering how lack of knowledge about alternatives, not to mention coercion from partners, can play a big role in women having an abortion.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Thayer also said that clinic workers were trained to persuade pregnant mothers, especially hesitant ones, that abortion was their only option: If they’d say, “I’m not able to pay [my bill] today,” then we would say something like, “Well, if you can’t pay $10 today, how are you going to take care of a baby? Have you priced diapers? Do you know how much it costs to buy a car seat? Where would you go for help? There’s no place in Storm Lake (or whatever town they were in), you know, where you can get help as a pregnant mom. So really, don’t you think your smartest choice is termination?”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“In 2017, two former Planned Parenthood employees appeared in a Live Action video, revealing that the organziation imposes abortion quotas on its clinics and incentivizes workers to convince women to choose abortion.70 Sue Thayer, former manager of the Planned Parenthood clinic in Storm Lake, Iowa, told Live Action that executives would reward clinics with pizza parties or extra paid time off if they met their abortion targets. Clinics that didn’t offer abortions were given quotas for abortion referrals made to other Planned Parenthood facilities. “I trained my staff the way that I was trained, which was to really encourage women to choose abortion and to have it at Planned Parenthood because it counts towards our goal,” Thayer said.71 Former Planned Parenthood nurse Marianne Anderson told Live Action, “I felt like I was more of a salesman sometimes, to sell abortions. We were constantly told we have quotas to meet to stay open.”72”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“While abortion supporters attempt to portray pregnancy-resource centers as somehow harming women or limiting their “right” to abortion, in fact they’re merely offering something that abortion groups themselves don’t provide. Compared with 354,871 abortions performed in 2020, Planned Parenthood itself reported that they offered only 8,626 instances of “prenatal care” and 2,667 adoption referrals.69 In other words, for every instance of “prenatal care,” Planned Parenthood clinics performed 41 abortions. For every adoption referral, they performed 133 abortions. Among services Planned Parenthood provided that specifically related to the woman’s pregnancy decision—including abortion, prenatal or miscarriage care, and adoption referrals—abortion made up more than 96 percent.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Abortion advocates often receive help from politicians in their crusade to discredit pregnancy-resource centers and limit their reach. In California, Democrats passed the “Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act,” which was drafted with the assistance of Planned Parenthood and enforced by two successive state attorneys general, Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra.66 The law required pregnancy-resource centers to post large advertisements for the state’s free or low-cost abortion program. These centers eventually won a challenge against the law at the Supreme Court, which returned the case to a lower court, ruling that California’s statute likely violated the free-speech rights of the pro-life citizens operating the centers.67 California wasn’t alone in this project. Progressive cities across the country have tried to enact policies requiring pregnancy-resource centers to make disclosures that make them sound illegitimate and unqualified to serve pregnant women.68”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“NARAL affiliates have conducted undercover “investigations” into pregnancy-resource centers called “Unmasking Fake Clinics,” accusing pro-life centers of misleading women with “lies” such as this one: “More than 67% of the locations intentionally referred to the fetus as ‘baby’ and told our investigator she was already a mother because she was already pregnant.”65”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“NARAL Pro-Choice America, meanwhile, has operated an extensive PR campaign painting pregnancy-resource centers as “fake women’s health clinics.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“A coalition of pro-abortion groups published a 2021 report called Designed to Deceive: A Study of the Crisis Pregnancy Center Industry in Nine States.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“[Pregnancy-resource centers] may be providing resources to people who are considering continuing their pregnancy and/or they may be misleading people about the care and referrals they provide related to abortion.”63”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Confronted with the fact that many women choose abortion because they feel they have no other options, pregnancy-resource centers exist to present women with alternatives to abortion and to provide whatever assistance they need to continue their pregnancy, almost all of which is offered at no cost. For some mothers, this might be a pregnancy test or an ultrasound, or counseling to encourage her that motherhood is a worthwhile choice that she’s capable of undertaking. For others, it might be learning the facts about adoption and receiving help in navigating the adoption process. Most pregnancy-resource centers offer women financial or material support that she isn’t receiving from the child’s father or from her own family, support that enables her to feel confident in choosing life.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Many abortion-rights supporters insist that they don’t want to be called “pro-abortion.” Rather, they prefer the label “pro-choice.” But in practice, the most vocal supporters of abortion rarely support options that enable expectant mothers to make any choice other than abortion. Since the Supreme Court created a right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, pro-lifers across the country have sustained pregnancy-resource centers, sometimes known as crisis-pregnancy centers, to help pregnant mothers in need welcome their babies into the world.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing

“Abortion proponents not only refuse to support laws protecting unborn children from discrimination based on race, sex, or disability, but they insist that being permitted to discriminate is a necessary component of “women’s health care,” and they take legal action to ensure that women can continue to choose abortion even for these reasons.”
― Ryan T. Anderson, Tearing Us Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing