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As I approach my nineteenth birthday this Saturday, I once again remember specially, with great sadness and more than a little disgust, the millions of people of our generation who will never have the chance to celebrate a birthday with their friends and family. These are the first of the almost innumerable victims of the horrendous Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in these United States.
Tragically, many otherwise intelligent and compassionate Americans have been duped by the abortion industry for upwards of 20 years now, and have continued to lend their support to what is truly a modern-day holocaust of millions, dishonestly called "the right to choose." In a country which guarantees our rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," it is particularly disconcerting that a procedure which takes an innocent life in the name of liberty, while denying happiness to so many women, i s supported by law.
It is our duty, then, to support new laws to peacefully put an end to the abortion industry, and replace it with women and men who are willing to find caring solutions to help both innocent children and torn mothers.
The first step in this much needed productive dialogue is to admit the awful, simple fact that abortion cruelly takes an innocent life. Until we do this, we will not begin to search for better solutions, but will settle for the unacceptable. According to credible medical authorities, including the geneticist who discovered Down Syndrome, Dr. Jerome Lejeune, "if a fertilized egg is not by itself a full human being it could not become a man, because something would have to be added to it, and we know that d oes not happen...This is not opinion; it is a fact."
Euphemisms used by the Population Council, such as "pregnancy interruption" regarding "the product of conception," may make the destruction inherent in abortion sound acceptable, but the fact is that abortion can fairly, though bluntly, be called the murd er of an innocent person. Whether politicos or pro-choicers choose to admit this or not has no bearing on its truth.
It does, however, affect how we view the issue. Instead of debating access to abortions, then, a caring solution would be working together to help bear children, and, if necessary, helping to select from the numerous eager adoptive families for these chil dren.
Next, we must consider that abortions have a negative effect on the women who have them. Researcher Dr. Anne Speckhard states that "81 percent of [these women] report preoccupation with their aborted child, 54 percent had nightmares, 35 percent had percei ved visitations with their child, and 96 percent felt their abortion had taken a human life."
According to the group Women Exploited by Abortion, physical effects of abortion include sterility, stillbirths, bleeding and infections, shock and comas and insomnia. And the full extent of the side-effects of "private" abortions by RU-486, and methotrex ate and misoprostol cannot be known until long after it is too late to undue the damage these drugs will inevitably cause once legalized.
Instead of providing a "cure" worse than the "illness" for these women, then, a caring solution would be to address the problems that drive people to seek abortions. We need to help women and men in need by sharing our resources and support with them. We need to listen to them in love.
A truly moderate position on abortion then, is the pro-life position, requiring women and men to be responsible to their children, while seeking positive solutions to the problems that harm them.
If we can work toward a win-win situation, why should we settle for a lose-lose mentality? This mind-set continues to cost us far too much.
Kristen Roberts is an Arts and Sciences sophomore. Her column, 'Life in Balance,' appears every other Thursday. Her homepage can be found at http://www.u.arizona.edu/~knr.
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