The Darker Side Of Choice

Today, we mourn the anniversary of one of the two most damaging Supreme Court decisions in our nation's history. In 1857, the Supreme Court denied the personhood of black Americans in the infamous Dred Scott decision. Twenty-five years ago, seven people decided that a mother has a constitutional right to have her baby killed up until the moment of birth.

What has been the legacy of this decision_ Predictably, the foremost has been the cheapening of human life. The news stories of the last few years tell the tale of a mounting madness. A young mother in South Carolina drowns her two little boys because her ex-boyfriend didn't want children. A well-to-do college student, accompanied by her equally well-off boyfriend, gives birth in a motel room; the two young people, really still children themselves, then are accused of smashing the newborn's tiny skull and tossing him in the trash because they didn't want to disappoint their parents. A man in Boston stages an elaborate plot in which he shoots and kills his pregnant wife and their baby ... and then shoots himself, in a selfish scheme to frame an innocent man ... because a new baby would interfere with his ambitions as a restaurateur.

These killings were not born in a vacuum. They were conceived in and nurtured by a culture that says: "If your baby is inconvenient for you, if this isn't a good time for you, if the tiny person sucking her thumb, blissfully unaware of how precarious is her claim to life, is too much trouble for you, no big deal. Just dispose of her ... and go on with your life."

This danger to our nation's children does not stop when they leave the womb. The silent scream of every aborted baby proclaims that this country does not fully value any of its children. Even worse, that sad message has sunk in. The self-destructive behavior of America's young people ... suicide, drug abuse, and so forth ... shows that our children have succumbed to our societal myth that they don't matter.

That abortion hurts children isn't difficult to see. Less recognized is that this mantlepiece of the feminist movement hurts women.

Supporters of abortion claim that it is necessary to give women freedom, to empower them, to guarantee them full equality with men. Despite the rhetoric of choice, women themselves say that they seek abortion not to empower themselves or improve their lives. They seek it because they know no other way out of their difficult circumstances, because they think they have no other choice.

This sad failure of many feminists to serve the best interests of women is largely due to abortion itself. Because of the prevalence of abortion and the logistical ease with which it can be obtained, the consequences of non-marital sex are not readily apparent to many women or men. With the consequences not obvious, the behavior seems less dangerous. Hence more non-marital sex and more unplanned pregnancies ... and more women trapped, making life and death decisions without the support and comfort of trusted spouses.

Though hailed as a women's right, abortion is seen by many men as a means to escape from their responsibilities as fathers. Many women say that they choose abortion in order to please their babies' fathers, who are insisting on abortion in ways ranging from passive aggression to true coercion. Thus, this sacrosanct feminist right has unburdened men of their rightful responsibilities, leaving women alone to cope with the unintended results of behavior in which they surely did not engage alone.

Once the difficult decision to abort has been made and executed, the emotional trauma that women face is typically far from over. Women who have had abortions face soul-wrenching feelings of guilt, loss, and regret. For many women, these feelings never go away. On each birthday that would have been, they think of the child who will never grow up. Each time they see children the same ages that their children would have been, they think of those lost boys and girls who once were and are no more. On the anniversaries of their abortions, they are plagued with guilt.

Emotional turmoil is not all. Many women face severe health problems due to their abortions. Some of the most common include: cervical incompetence, uterine perforation, and septicemia. A link with breast cancer has also been found.

Contrary to the rhetoric of Roe, women still die from abortions. Carolina Gutierrez was the victim of a botched abortion that eventually claimed her life. A week before Christmas 1995, Gutierrez underwent an abortion at the Maber Medical Center, a storefront women's clinic in Miami's Little Havana. Sent home staggering from severe pain, Gutierrez telephoned the clinic for help several hours later. Clinic staff hung up on her. Frantically calling back again and again, she reached only an answering machine. No one ever called her back. Soon, no one would ever be able to call her again. Two days later, Gutierrez was rushed by ambulance to the hospital where she was diagnosed with septic shock. Her uterus had been perforated in two places, and a blood infection was spreading rapidly throughout her body. Carolina Gutierrez died six weeks later. She was 21-years-old. Her family will remember Christmas-time as the time when, alone and afraid, she set upon the path that led to her death.

Roe v. Wade was supposed to end horror stories like that of Carolina Gutierrez, but it has not. The sheer number of women being damaged by abortion is larger today than before Roe. There are several reasons for this.

First of all, legalization has increased the number of women seeking abortions, thereby placing more women at risk.

Second, abortion is a lucrative practice. The incentive is to do as many abortions as possible, which hinders safety.

Third, abortion advocates, in their zeal to keep abortion legal, have made the prosecution of incompetent abortionists difficult. Pamela Maraldo, former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called abortion malpractice suits "bogus," evidence of "extremism" and "an irresponsible abuse of our court system by zealots who seek to intimidate doctors and control women's lives."

Controlling women's lives is not the issue. The last 24 years have shown that abortion is destroying lives ... women's, children's, families'. It is time to accept the fact that abortion has not helped women ... it has hurt them, and everybody else. It is time to join with Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade, who has realized the horror of abortion and embraced the sanctity of human life. It is time to stop the killing.