|
|
The Lost
Generation: 31 Years of Roe v. Wade
By Hans
Zeiger
In a sad sort
of way, I am blessed to have survived the year 1985. That was the year I was
born, and the year that 1.6 million of my fellow American citizens were murdered
in abortion clinics.
1985 was the
year that more abortions were performed than in any other year before or since
except 1988 and 1990. Numbed by the widespread cultural acceptance of abortion,
I lack the emotional regrets that old soldiers have when they reflect on their
friends lost in battle. But the year I was born, abortion claimed more of my
peers than all of the deaths in all of America's wars combined.
In the 31 years since
January 22, 1973, abortion has become one of the most common surgical procedures
performed, and it is done in the safety and serenity of modern, plush clinics
operated by exceptionally profitable non-profits like Planned Parenthood. Since
Roe v. Wade, government social service agencies have taken advantage of the
legality of abortion to add it to the list of public services provided to
low-income citizens. Today, three of ten abortions are taxpayer-funded. Since
1973, one in four pre-born children have been numbered among the victims of the
war against life.
If we accept
the obvious, the most recent World Almanac should have listed the leading cause
of death as "abortion."
I once heard
someone reflect on the terrible, hypothetical concept that certain great men and
women of America's past had never been born. Flip through a history book and
begin crossing out the names of the presidents, the pioneers, the inventors, the
writers, the scientists. Spread black ink over the photographs and paintings and
names of Washington and Jefferson, of Edison and Ford, of Lincoln and Martin
Luther King.
We have
witnessed a purge of horrific proportions within the past couple of generations,
and abortion's count in America alone is around 43 million. But I don't suppose
that young Americans, born in the past thirty years, have taken much time to
reflect on the idea that a great number of their generation has already departed
from this world. 43 million souls is quite a significant number. But since they
aren't really souls, as we're told, it doesn't matter. They are fetuses; they
are tissues; they are inconveniences. We are better without them, say their
killers.
Even if we accept the
humanitarian justifications of the burgeoning abortion industry, that my late
peers were mere fetuses that lacked any type of spiritual dimension, there is no
reasonable person who doubts that they were once living human beings. The great
national debate no longer questions the definition of life, it questions whether
there is any value in life at all.
Abortion
doctors and pro-choice activists know quite intimately the fact that pre-born
children are alive from conception. The contention of the pro-abortion movement
is that life has no intrinsic value, and if possible, we ought to avoid it.
Indeed, if the fetuses butchered around me in 1985 were simple organisms taken
mercifully from this world to
spare them
from the hardships of life, and to make the burden less stressful for society,
we owe our prosperity and our low poverty levels to the unborn generation.
But what if
my missing contemporaries were souls created by and in the image of an Almighty
God?
I reflected
on this question when I protested at the grand opening of a Planned Parenthood
teen clinic in my hometown a few weeks ago before returning to college for the
new semester. I watched as young people drove up to the clinic and filled the
parking lot to capacity. I have seen that the abortion industry has done the
necessary work to maintain itself for yet another generation.
But can
America survive?
Can America
continue to exist through the dilation and evacuation procedure during which a
crushing instrument is inserted into a mother's uterus and pieces are pulled off
of the child and assembled on a sterile, white table to make sure they all came
out? Can America continue to endure the ammonite burning of children by saline
amniotic infusion that concludes in a hopeless struggle against the severe pain
of arsoned lungs and skin?
Today, 43
million ghosts of infanticide walk the fields and roads and city streets of
America. Victims of murder, their invisible presence moves hauntingly, silently
through our nation. The abject condemnation of life, legalized and advertised
since 1973, thrives and grows in every state. But the innocent ghosts of
infanticide cannot speak for themselves. We must do all we can to speak for
them.
How do we
speak for the dead? We join the pro-life movement as Americans joined the
abolitionist movement of the 1850s. We speak and we write, we rally and we
minister, we encourage and we contribute, we pray, until every life in every
place of America is legally - and culturally - protected.
The Life War
has gone on for too long. For the 43 million dead, we must carry on the fight.
|