America's Shameful Legacy
By Wanda Franz, Ph.D. - President of the National Right to Life USA
Condensed & Reprinted from the National Right to Life News (USA)
Twenty years ago, on January 22, 1973, the United States Supreme Court swept away all laws prohibiting abortion, imposed legalized abortion on the whole country, and thus unleashed the legal and profitable slaughter of millions of innocent babies in the womb.
Twenty years and 30 million abortion deaths ago, the Supreme Court robbed preborn children of all vestiges of legal personhood.
Twenty years and 30 million abortion deaths ago, the Supreme Court arrogantly ignored the dictum of the Declaration of Independence "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights", and imposed its own dictum that taking a child’s life by abortion is a constitutional "liberty".
Twenty years and 30 million abortions ago, the Supreme Court made the sanctuary of the womb into the most dangerous place an innocent child can occupy.
Americans must ask Justice Blackman and all other jurists who claim to see the right to an abortion in the Constitution how they can justify this peculiar "right" that requires that another human being must be killed each and every time this "right" is exercised.
Americans must ask those who defend abortion "rights" bow they can categorically oppose truly informed consent and waiting periods, spousal consent and notification, parental consent and notification, conscience clauses for individuals and institutions.
Liberty for who? Is it just to deny a woman full information about the biological facts of the child’s development in the womb, about the dangers of abortion - before she lets an abortion violate her body? Why should she not have the same right to full disclosure she has with all other surgical procedures? How much longer must we hear of women being told before an abortion that the child in the womb is "just tissue, like a tumor"?
Is it just to deny a woman the opportunity to rethink beforehand the irreversible act of aborting her child? The law requires such waiting periods for loan agreements and insurance policies.
Is it just to deny a father a say about the abortion of the child he helped to create? If fathers have no rights, how can we hold them to any obligations?
Is it just to demand that taxpayers fund the private decision of a woman to have an abortion?
The proponents of abortion have spared no effort to persuade the public that the legalization of abortion would provide great benefits. With abortion readily available, there would be far fewer "unwanted" children, child abuse would decrease, women and girls would be able to make "responsible choices" and have "options", there would be fewer teenage parents, and abortions would be "safe".
Sadly, one thing is true, there are fewer children because almost a third of each generation is aborted. Yet child abuse has reached epidemic proportions ever since legal abortion enabled parents to have children only "when they were ready to have a child".
Teenage pregnancy and birth rates have risen sharply. Teenage pregnancy rates have decreased in Minnesota and Utah where the law requires real parental notification and therefore fosters parental involvement.
Abortion supposedly gives women "control over their bodies" and over their lives. In fact, abortion is most "liberating’ to irresponsible and predatory men; abortion frees them of any responsibility for the child they helped to create. Women, however, find themselves abandoned in ever greater numbers.
And, as pro-lifers warned, the "choice" of privatized killing by abortion has been broadened into the "choice" of privatized killing by infanticide and euthanasia - all in the name of providing medical care.
This then is the appalling legacy of 20 years of legal abortion in America.
It is spine chilling to realize that the enthusiasm for abortion goes well beyond the fraudulent claim that abortion is a necessary "option" in cases of real or imagined hardship. Rebecca Walker, contributing editor to Ms. magazine, writes in the November 1992 issue of Harper’s Magazine: "[Y]our abortion can be a rebellious and empowering act. It is an act through which you can assert yourself; one which can enable you to feel more connected to women around the world. Indeed, it is a surgical operation with a mission.
Page 4 Pro-Life News Autumn, 1993