Thirty-five years of destructive abortion

On Jan. 22, Roe v. Wade will have been in effect for 35 years, long enough to review some of its consequences, both intended and unintended.

The issue has not left the nation's conscience. Somehow knowing that more than 48 million babies have been aborted sears the nation's conscience.

The Supreme Court may have made abortion legal but it can never make it morally justifiable. The Supreme Court made slavery legal in its Dred Scott decision but could never make it moral.

One of the unintended consequences is that abortion has detached men from their traditional role of protector of women and children. Having no say in the life of the unborn child, they predictably refuse any responsibility for the child, dumping all the burden of support and upbringing on the woman.

Public health statistics show that the rate of births to single mothers was 18 percent in 1973 but 37 percent in 2005.

These children start out disadvantaged from day one. Some of children overcome this disadvantaged start. Most do not. Our inner city schools are racked by poverty and low academic performance with no father in the home.

Early ultra-sound of readings of the baby in-utero have exposed the lie, "It is just tissue. It's not a baby." Many women turn away from abortion when they see the beating heart, the kicking legs, and the wee fingernails. Somehow this woman knows, "This is not just excess tissue. This is my baby," Science has caught up with God.

These are issues that our nation needs to consider as we look toward the election of a new president.

All of the candidates running for the presidency have had to take either a pro-life or pro-abortion position clear.

Let us "Now choose life, so that you and your children my live." (Deut. 30.19.)

Priscilla Weese

Wheaton