Political Quotes

“Well, I guess I disagree with that. Those of us who believe a woman should control her own reproductive system, in concert with her family and her doctor, have objection to the government getting involved and telling us what to do. It is actually not your reproductive system--and I say ``you'' generically, as a man--it is our reproductive system. In a sense this has been a battle for our identity. I sat on a term-setting and paroling authority in California in the 1960s, when abortion was illegal. I sentenced women to State prison for abortion. It had then an indeterminate sentence of between 6 months and 10 years. I saw abortionists come back to prison. I asked one, when I was setting the sentence: Why do you keep doing this? Her first name was Anita. And she said: Because I feel so sorry for the women. That was the way it was. I remember passing the plate at Stanford for a young woman to go to Tijuana for an abortion. The morbidity that was done to women through back-alley abortions, this has opened a Pandora's box of big emotional issues for women. As to the Hyde amendment, if there is rape and you can prove it, that is right; and then there is a 12-year-old, a 13-year-old who is out on the streets as a prostitute, which is a different thing--sort of the same but sort of different. The overwhelming evil of this trade overcomes any of this, because you take a young woman, and you probably change their life for the worse for the rest of her life.…”