woman, a feminist reporter from Canada, put it to me recently, "the press tried to find a plank in the feminist platform they could support without jeopardizing their own entrenched power structure to invasion by qualified women. They found it: abortion." Another example of what the press has done is their response to our recent picketing of the national convention of Now: in most cases the name of the picketing group was not even mentioned, and the two major wire services left the strong implication (by conveniently quoting Ms. Wilma Scott Heidi, outgoing Now president, immediately following their description of the picketing) that we were "right to lifers". While we do not mind that designation, it is misleading, because not all right to lifers are feminists, the movement being as broad based as it is, and because we feel that the mislabeling implication, if intentional, was done because the media do not wish to admit that there is feminist opposition to abortion. If the media are not afraid of us, let them call us by our right name. We are PRO-LIFE FEMINISTS. We support full equality for women. Our reason for picketing was twofold: the denial of rights to unborn women by the preexisting feminist groups, and the social ostracism and fascist techniques used against feminists who are pro-life and not afraid to say so.

People who know they have the truth do not fear open debate. We are suppressed because they know we are right!

We keep hearing the claim that we are a tiny, vocal minority. A few figures prove otherwise. In Ohio, before the Supreme Court decision, the Ohio Abortion Alliance had 800 members, as reported to me by its president. At the same time, the Ohio Right to Life Society had 40,000 members. Currently, the Ohio Abortion Alliance has been dissolved, and it is estimated that the Ohio Right to Life Society has between 100,000 and 150,000 members. The National Organization for Women has 36,000 members currently, while the League of Women Voters has 160,000. The LWV is believed to have recently decided to support abortion. If so, it would be the largest organization that does. However, the pro-life movement at present is estimated to number at least 3.5 million.

The pro-abortion people sought at first to repeal or modify firm abortion laws by means of a state referendum. They succeeded by a narrow margin in Washington state, before the sleeping giant of the grass-roots pro-life population woke up. They missed badly in Michigan and North Dakota, where referenda were voted down overwhelmingly 2 to 1 in Michigan (after only about 3 weeks of pro-life publicity) and 4 to 1 in North Dakota. It is interesting to note that the pro-abortion forces often cite Michigan because they believed the victory there was due to a very Catholic influence, so that they could exercise their religious bigotry, but they never mention North Dakota, because as everybody knows, North Dakota is only about 14% Catholic, and if everyone of them had voted pro-abortion, the referendum would still have been defeated by an overwhelming majority. Having discovered who the real minority was, the proabortion forces tried in only a few places to achieve permissive abortion in the legislatures, but fought their battle after that predominantly in the courts, which could be responsive to clever propaganda primarily because they are not answerable to the electorate. And so, even though pro-abortion people make loud noises now and then about a national referendum, they have never actively sought one because they know they are the vocal minority. If I am wrong, let them prove it.

Consider the polls: when Gallup or Harris polled a small group of people on abortion, their questions did not even contain the word "abortion". Asking how anyone can take a poll about anything without using the term referring to the subject in question, another poll was conducted, using the word "abortion", which gave the viewpoint to pro-life by a sizeable margin.

Abortion is bad for society. Other persons testifying before me have claimed that abortion reduces welfare costs. What they are doing is citing the obvious and ignoring the possibility of new factors. First of all and most importantly, you are not doing the poor a favor by having as your reason the reduction of costs. Moreover, some abortion leaders have stated that abortion is not intended as racial genocide, it just happens to work out that way. I am giving you a copy of the Wynn Report, from England, which cites the damage caused to subsequent children by abortion. The abortion leaders here have admitted they simply don't know anything about the effects of abortion beyond a few weeks. One instance of damage to subsequent children alone will suffice to show the true cost to society of abortion. A common result of first trimester abortion is prematurity in subsequent children. Prematurity is a major cause of cerebral

palsy. Where abortion equals live births, prematurity for the population as a whole nearly doubles. I called United Cerebray Palsy and asked them the cost to society of cerebral palsy. I was told, billions of dollars in lost productivity alone, not to mention the cost of special equipment and training. If we do not stop abortion soon, we can expect the cost, both financially and in terms of human lives, to double very soon. And that cost in financial terms alone will be in billions of dollars. In Communist countries the abortion laws have been tightened because of the cost to society and to women. Will we learn from their experiences or must be subject millions of women to abortion to make our own statistics? As Santayana said, "those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it."

Abortion is bad for women. It is bad whether legal or illegal. Legal abortionists have compromised the basis of their medical ethics: they have compromised away their healing art and become the technocrats of death. Why should they respect the right to life and health of the women? The statistics prove they do not. Legal abortion results in an overall complication rate to women which is horrendous: 35% of all women aborted in Germany suffer longterm ill effects. In Japan, the figure is 29%. In Canada, 39% among teenagers. In Czechoslovakia, 20-30%. In Australia, two studies show figures of 20% and 70%, the latter in a public hospital. The death rate from statistics taken in numerous countries is twice as high for first trimester abortion as it is for pregnancy and childbirth. Logic alone should verify this point: which is more dangerous for women: the natural process, or the abrupt interruption of it? If you are interested in preserving the health of women, pass a Human Life Amendment and enforce it. Dr. Christopher Tietze, who is pro-abortion, and a renowned demographer, says that legalizing abortion does not reduce illegal abortion rates. Other authorities claim that 90% of illegal abortions are done by competent doctors. What legalizing abortion does is to increase the total done. Because you have the legal abortions on top of the illegal ones.

Are the doctors interested in the health of women? Not when 7 out of 9 male urine samples tested in abortion clinics in London were reported as positive for pregnancy. Not when results are similarly falsified in major cities in the United States. Not when the most notorious abortionist in Canada, Dr. Henry Morgentaler, is known to be aborting women, 20% of whom are not pregnant. The abortionists are candid: they are not for women's rights; they are for their own financial gain; their own self-interests:

From a former abortionist: "It was easy to see these women as animals.” From those still active: "The great thing about the Abortion Act is that it has given us the opportunity to perpetuate Hitler's progressive thinking."

"Financialy, after years of struggle, I can't help feeling a little like the Texan who drilled for water and struck oil." "A syndicate invited me to be its medical director for up to $250,000 a year."

"But if the courts declare abortion laws unconstitutional, the doctors will say, 'Now it is against the law not to do abortions"—and then they will do them, for in some cases they may be sued if they don't."

"Each country will have to decide its own form of coercion. At present, the means available are compulsory sterilization and compulsory abortion." ". failure of the voluntary restraints has made government controls (on population) absolutely necessary."

"Population control, whatever form it takes, must be mandatory to be successful. We must consider enforced contraception, whether through taxation on surplus children, or through more severe means, such as conception-license replacing or supplementing marriage license." "Just as we have laws compelling death control, so we must have laws requiring birth control-the purpose being to ensure a zero rate of population growth."

The abortionists are using women's bodies to promote a government ideal of of population control: they are gaining financially from using women's bodies to perpetuate the government's population policy.

They have indicated to each other that the tactic is to obscure the humanity of the unborn child, and the fact that abortion kills a baby. They instruct each other never to call the unborn chilren "babies" but always to call them "fetuses". Thus they have used a scientific term to somewhat obscure meaning as a niggerizing term much like the term "broad" as applied to women. The purpose: to dehumanize. Do they honestly believe that this child is only a blob of tissue? Well, as one satirical author from Canada would have it, everyone knows that the baby's body is instantaneously formed at the moment of

birth! Feminists who hold that unborn babies as only blobs of tissue are known in pro-life feminists circles as "blob feminists". Futhermore to those who claim the baby is part of the mother's body, we state: either we women are sometimes part male, or we are all female and proud of it. Or to put it in the words of a 9 year old: Did you ever see a woman with testicles? But what do pro-abortionists say about the humanity of the unborn? About the nature of abortion?

"Abortion is the taking of a life." -Mary Calderone, MD

"An abortion . . . kills the life of a baby after it has begun."-Planned Parenthood

Fertilization, then, has taken place; a baby has been conceived." -Alan Guttmacher, MD

"A woman's right of privacy may well include the right to remove an unwanted child at least in the early stage of pregnancy." -Judge Gerhard Gesell, in US vs Milan Vuitch

"The staff are now required to be involved in the induced abortion of a large fetus which neither resembles a 'blob'. . . or a ‘group of cells'—but very much resembles a baby." -Christa Keller, Pamela Copeland, abortion counsellors "The fetal deformity clause is not included for the sake of the fetus (no one can speak for him no matter how hard some try) or for the sake of society, but for the sake of the pregnant woman." -Jimmye Kimmey, Association for the Study of Abortion

"Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced, it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing which continues to be socially abhorrent. The results has had a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception, and is continuous, whether intra- or extra-uterine, until death. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not often put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necesary because, while a new ethic is being accepted, the old one has not yet been rejected."-from an editorial favoring abortion-ondemand in the Journal, California State Medical Association.

So it appears that women's bodies are not only being used to promote population control, but they even lie to women about the unborn child, and about about what abortion does. If there was ever a philosophy which was degrading to women, it is the philosophy that we must lie to women, cheat them, and fool them, in order to get their money, and reduce the population. Do women want to be the instruments to perpetuate Hitler's progressive thinking? No, we do not.

I'd like to talk for just a moment about euthanasia. Feminists for Life has not had a stress euthanasia as much because so far, we have not received the kind of suppression on this issue that we receive on the abortion issue. But euthanasia is an area of no less concern. It appears to be self-evident that one possible reason for the promotion of euthanasia is because women are treated as second-class citizens. You will note that the Supreme Court declared that abortion is to be permitted because the unborn are not human "in the whole sense". Well, neither are the elderly, the retarded, the unwanted infant, or the physically deformed. Who comprise the majority of the elderly? Women. 60% of the persons above age 65 are women. They are considered a burden on society because most of them are poor: they don't get enough social security. In past societies women were not persons "in the whole sense" and in our society, soon elderly women will not be persons "in the whole sense" either. We are opposed to euthanasia because it takes innocent life in over half of whom are unwanted women.

Do we need abortion and euthanasia for women? The answer to that question is no. That is, if we are willing to care enough. There are many ways in which women can be helped without creating destruction. I will name a few. Enforcement of existing laws against discrimination, such as the fifth and fourteenth amendment, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1963, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Employment Opportunities Act of 1972, the Education Amendments of 1972, and the Public Health Service Act as amended in 1971. The ratification and implementation of the Equal Rights Amendment. True equality of opportunity in wages, training, and advancement in the employment field. Nondescrimination in employment and other areas regarding the pregnant. The establishment of maternity communes, where

single women with children, born and unborn, can go and live and share resources. Hospices for the elderly. An effective natural birth control method, such as the Ovulation Method, which allows women to control their fertility before conception without drugs, devices or surgery, and is 98.5% effective. The creation of a masculine image which included the strength of character in a man to take the responsibility for his sexual acts: the recognition that consent to sex on the part of men is an unspoken contract guaranteeing that he will support a woman and her unborn child until birth takes place. The creation of a society in which rape is not considered possible. Where men do not regard rape as a mark of manhood, and where women are capable of defending themselves from attackers, and do not hesitate to do so. A society where raped women are not presumed guilty until proven innocent. Corporations who are willing to take the blame for the pollution they cause, rather than blaming the future generation, and babies in general. An ecological movement that teaches individuals to respect the environments, starting with the elimination of litterbugs. A society dedicated to the proposition that we should remove political barriers to food and fertilizer distribution instead of people. A society which is not dedicated to planned obsolescence. A society which is dedicated to the proposition that the way to stabilize the population is to help the third world nations become fully developed technology and educationally. That recognizes that just as technology can be used to create problems, so can it be used to solve them. That recognizes that each human crisis leads to progress. That recognizes technology as the servant and not the master of men and women. That does not direct itself against the bodies and minds of women. In other words, a society which respects each and every one of us as a unique and irreplaceable individual, entitled to life, liberty, and property. Dare we demand so much? How can we demand any less?

We urge you to favorably report the human life amendment out of committee speedily. Time is of the essence. For the children killed today, tomorrow will be too late.

A final comment about choice of language in the human life amendment: the purpose of the amendment is to reverse the Supreme Court decisions of January 22, 1973. Any reasonable amendment should do this. However, it is our feeling that a good amendment will have the following characteristics:

1. It will specifically define human life as beginning at conception or fertilization, which is synonymous.

2. It will provide protection for all innocent life from conception till natural death, and include the aged, ill, incapacitated, and the physically and mentally handicapped.

3. It will prohibit both state and private action or inaction which will lead to deliberate destruction of innocent life without due process of law.

4. It will no permit abortion for physical health or mental or social considerations, but will permit abortion when there is an immediate physical threat to the life of the mother, from the pregnancy.

5. It will not permit the states to allow abortion or positive euthanasia to be legal. We do not cry "states' right" in reference to sexual discrimination; we will not permit the cry "states' rights" for killing based on ageism.

We must correct the negativism of the death cult speedily so we may concentrate on true, positive solutions to human problems. Let us get the Human Life Amendment ratified and then let us begin to work on the solutions, starting with this committee.

[From the Chicago Tribune]

ABORTION EXPLOITS WOMEN

(By Gloria V. Heffernan, M.D.)

After centuries of being treated as objects, women are being presented the final mechanical insult as a constitutional right.

The strange compulsion for abortion is in reality the ultimate exploitation of women by immature men: technocrats, generally, imbued with a myopic sense of social awareness and unable to interpret or control their own sexuality. The playboys of the Western world and the authoritarian "adolescents" of the Socialist world sacrifice their women in order to preserve their dream of libidinal freedom. It is the women who must go to surgery over and over again

to insure this dream. The whimpering male refused to take responsibility for his sexual behavior.

It is no surprise that Playboy Foundation money is now competing with Rockefeller Foundation money to promote the concept of permissive abortion. The rich man's solution has become the purile male's solution and the last vestige of responsibility and commitment has disappeared.

It is the woman who has been deliberately misled by the male-dominated medical prefession into thinking that abortion is merely contraception slightly postponed. The serious physical and psychic consequences of this self-serving deception are muted despite a wealth of medical literature from the United States and foreign countries.

It is a national disgrace that the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology is not in the forefront of the fight against abortion. The depth of this deception is brought out in two recent articles. Dr. Richard L. Burt in editorial comment in Obstetrics & Gynecology, April, 1971, terms permissive abortion "the Fifth Horseman" riding with famine, death, pestilence, and plague.

He catalogs the serious side effects reported from Scandinavian and Eastern European countries with a long experience in legal abortion. These include hemorrhage, infection, prematurity in subsequent pregnancies, sterility, perforation and the psychic sequels of guilt and depression.

This alarm is echoed in another article in the British journal Lancet, December 4th, 1971, in which Dr. J. A. Staillworthy decries the conspiracy of silence about the side effects of abortion.

A minimal adherence to the concept of informed consent is ignored by most referral services and pro-abortion professors of obstetrics and gynecology. This frightening failure of the medical profession is most apparent in the continued use of the "salting out" method of abortion by American physicians in the face of the condemnation of this procedure by the Japanese medical profession.

The recent report by Christopher Tietze in Family Planning Perspective, October, 1971, of a 22.4 percent serious complication rate using this procedure documents the American tragedy-a needless mortality and morbidity that incriminates the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology in corporate malpractice for not banning this procedure.

The greatest tragedy, however, lies in the fact that doctors have renounced their ethics to become social technicians rationalizing their position with dreary cliches and denying their own science to make it fit vague sociological imperatives. The traditional responsibility in obstetrics for two patients has been denied by the abortionists when the whole thrust of scientific medical practice has been to bring the healing arts to the child in the uterus, just as it does to any patient.

We find the medical technicians claiming the organs and bodies of the aborted children for human experimentation; some of them still alive. What horrible echoes are these from the recent past!

What can we expect from a society that can rationalize away the most fundamental of human values-the value of life? What is to become of a medical profession that substitutes self-serving cliches for its ethics? What is to become of women who would ask the courts to institutionalize death as a legitimate tool for solving personal problems? Such a society is doomed to an unending spiral of violence if women do not change it.

Women must deny violence a legitimate place in our society by rejecting the first violence-abortion. The women of this society must say to purile men that the game is over. You can no longer exploit our bodies either in your center fold or in your hospitals.

FEMINISTS FOR LIFE

Our organization takes two stands: (1) Full equality for women in all areas. (2) The right of every baby to be born. We demand an end to all legal, social, and economic discrimination against women, including mass media stereotypes. We recognize all people as individuals with equal rights, including the unborn. We believe it is inconsistent to demand rights for ourselves and deny them to unborn babies. Without the right to life, all other rights are meaningless. Furthermore, since roughly 50 percent of the unborn are girls, half the abortions kill our sisters.