Political Quotes

“John Quincy Adams, in a famous summation to the Supreme Court in 1841, spoke on behalf of 35 Africans he represented in the historic Amistad case involving that slave ship. Adams told the Supreme Court they would not have a more important case before them because this concerns the very nature of man. Mr. Speaker, today we confront the same issue only today it is the unborn whose humanity is being threatened, not the slaves. The question we are faced with is whether a preborn child has value; value sufficient to warrant protection in the law from a criminal assault, or whether the tiny, unborn infant is beneath protection, without value, without standing, without significance. Whether this little unborn is merely a randomly multiplying bunch of cells, a sort of tumor, like Shakespeare's sound and fury, signifying nothing. A famous novelist, Saul Bellow, once wrote, "A great deal of energy can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is great." To rationalize the divesting of the little battered body of the unborn child, divest it of its humanity, its membership in the human family, is the ultimate indignity. My colleagues will not even call him a victim. In the endless debate on abortion, the term "extremist" is hurled across the aisle. I cannot imagine a more extreme posture than to deny the humanity of the unborn.”