Katha Pollitt Quotes

Author Image

Katha Pollitt

Profession : Poet

Birth : October 14, 1949

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.

Katha Pollitt

Women have to control their fertility for 30 years. Thirty years is a long time not to make mistakes.

Katha Pollitt

Women who have abortions are people you know. Because that is the truth! One in three American women will have an abortion by menopause.

Katha Pollitt

Do men drop out of college because they get someone pregnant? Do they quit their job if they get someone pregnant? No. And we do not require men to support women they have made pregnant. Once the baby is born, there can be child support. Before that, though, no.

Katha Pollitt

I put out a call on Twitter and Facebook and email for women to tell me their stories about their abortions. And many women said, 'I told my boyfriend I was pregnant, and that was the last I ever heard of them.'

Katha Pollitt

We want to make sure that women have a way to use all their gifts in society, to get educated, to be all they can be in the workforce, to really develop as people in all the ways that they can. We want this for men too! And we want this for children. Well this can't happen if this can be sandbagged by an ill-timed and unwanted pregnancy.

Katha Pollitt

If you have been vaccinated for polio, mumps, measles, chicken pox, hepatitis, or rabies, it may be too late for you to stand your ethical ground: You have already benefited from fetal-tissue research. This is, after all, a practice that's been legal since the 1930s.

Katha Pollitt

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.

Katha Pollitt

Coming out was crucial to changing attitudes about gays and lesbians: will people feel differently about abortion if they know their mother, their aunt, or their friend had one?

Katha Pollitt

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

Katha Pollitt

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.

Katha Pollitt