Katha Pollitt

“Sure, men like a challenge - but so do women. And nobody likes to be challenged all the time. I know plenty of long-standing happy couples who slept together right away, spent hours yakking on the phone, split checks down the middle, and lived together for years before the wedding.”

“I think women have the right to consult their own wishes, needs, and capacities and produce only loved, wanted children they can care for - or even no children at all. I think we would all be better off as a society if we respected women's ability to make these decisions for themselves and concentrated on caring well for the born.”

“Why must the woman apologize for not having a baby just because she happened to get pregnant? It's as if we think motherhood is the default setting for a woman's life from first period to menopause, and she needs a note from God not to say yes to every zygote that knocks on her door.”

“In our culture, the shame about accidental pregnancy is inextricable from the shame about having had sex. That disapproval of sex is one reason our record with contraception is so poor. If you're not supposed to be sexual, you don't plan for sex. You cross your fingers and hope for the best.”

“In the end, abortion is an issue of fundamental human rights. To force women to undergo pregnancy and childbirth against their will is to deprive them of the right to make basic decisions about their lives and well-being, and to give that power to the state.”

“My mother had an illegal abortion in 1960, which was the year the birth control pill came out, but I guess a little late for her, but - and I never knew. I found out when my father, after her death, got her FBI file.”

“Abortion opponents say women seek abortions in haste and confusion. Pro-choicers reply: Abortion is the most difficult, agonizing decision a woman ever makes.”

“Women who give up their children for adoption are years and years later talking about how painful it was, much more than women who have abortions.”

“We need to say that women have sex, have abortions, are at peace with the decision, and move on with their lives. We need to say that is their right, and, moreover, it's good for everyone that they have this right: The whole society benefits when motherhood is voluntary.”

“Opposition to abortion was one of the ways the Christian right was brought into the Republican Party by conservatives hoping to move the party further right. Now, of course, the tail is wagging the dog.”

“A potential person is not a person, any more than an acorn is an oak tree. I don't think women should have to give birth just because a sperm met an egg.”

“Planned Parenthood is a pretty popular organization. Way more popular than Congress! It claims that one in five women have received care from one of its clinics. And this care, despite what abortion opponents say, is excellent and not easily replaceable by 'community health centers.' Texas tried it, and thousands of women went without care.”

“I think the meaning of abortion is what the woman says it is: For a woman who wants a child but can't have this one, it can be sad; for a woman who doesn't want a baby, it can feel like a huge relief, like having your whole life given back to you.”

“Everyone will be happier if fewer women are tied to abusive men, drop out of school, and live impoverished lives because of a random pregnancy.”

“Abortion opponents know full well that the public would not abide putting women in prison en masse. Politically, it's more palatable to portray them as irrational, ignorant, and childlike, perhaps even temporarily insane.”

“Ariel may look a lot like Barbie, and her adventure may be limited to romance and over with the wedding bells, but unlike, say, Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, she's active, brave and determined, the heroine of her own life. She even rescues the prince. And that makes her a rare fish, indeed, in the world of preschool culture.”

“We do not have the idea that all children are valuable parts of society. We only have the idea that our own children are.”

“There is a huge reservoir of support for abortion rights from ordinary women. I hear all the time from women who had abortions and say it made possible the good life they went on to have. Social shaming silences too many.”

“Since 'Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights' came out, I've done a fair amount of public speaking, and the two statistics that always make the audience sit up are that nearly one in three women will have had at least one abortion by menopause and 61 percent of women who have abortions are already mothers.”

“Pregnancy and childbirth are not only physical and medical experiences, after all. They are also social experiences that, in modern America, just as when abortion was criminalized in the 1870s, serve to restrict women's ability to participate in society on equal footing with men.”