There are more former abortionists than we might think. Someone whom I have known for 25 years tells me they rarely go public with their conversion; they just quietly stop.

After 26 years as the most visible abortionist in Serbia, Stojan Adasevic had performed 48,000 abortions. Why he stopped is one of the most riveting stories I have ever read.

Not that the government stood idly by, indifferent to his turnabout. "They cut his salary in half, fired his daughter from her job, and did not allow his son to enter the university," we learn. In his great hour of testing, Adasevic says he received assistance from an unexpected source.
But no plot spoiler here. Go to www.catholicnewsagency.com/new.php?n=14322.

On this same topic, the most vivid account I've read of the torment some abortionists and staff go through appeared in a 1993 article in the American Medical News. Titled "Abortion Providers Share Inner Conflict," the setting was workshops sponsored by the National Abortion Federation and the true confessions that surfaced in them.

Let me offer one extended quote:

"The notion that the nurses, doctors, counselors and others who work in the abortion field have qualms about the work they do is a well-kept secret. But among themselves--at work, or at meetings with other providers--they talk about how they really feel. About women who come in for 'repeat' abortions. About women whose reasons for having abortions aren't ones they consider valid. About their anger toward women who wait until late in their pregnancies to have elective abortions. And about the feelings they have toward the fetus, especially as gestational age increases. They wonder if the fetus feels pain. They talk about the soul and where it goes.

And about their dreams, in which aborted fetuses stare at them with ancient eyes and perfectly shaped hands and feet, asking, 'Why? Why did you do this to me?'"

What keeps them going in this awful business? That's a question of human psychology that's beyond even the carefully constructed article and way beyond me. But on the surface it's a question of "different moral balance sheets."

We cannot take our eyes off what actually happens to the helpless baby who is torn to pieces.

The abortion clinic personnel's "bottom line" is "the woman's life and the particular circumstances that drive her to choose abortion," according to the article.

But as it applies to pro-lifers, this gets only part of the picture. We are not naive. We are fully aware that a woman (let alone a young girl) can find herself alone and abandoned–or worse yet, be on the receiving end of subtle hints or overt threats that she better get an abortion.

The difference is not that we do not appreciate a woman's "particular circumstances." Of course we do. It's that we know that killing a hapless baby "solves" nothing.

Pro-abortionists never tire of telling us that a woman may well feel an immediate sense of "relief." Our response? Why wouldn't she? The "problem" seemingly has vanished.

But typically the baby wasn't the problem in the first place. Thus a dead baby won't resuscitate a dying relationship. The child's death is more likely to kill that relationship.

A baby's life has been sacrificed and for what? There is a reason so many women are haunted by "ghosts."

There is also a reason that the abortion debate has never slackened in the 35 years since Roe v. Wade walloped an unsuspecting public. Unquestionably, an important reason is your unceasing effort to remind everyone that there must be a better way.

But for all your eloquence and passion and generosity, the issue would only simmer, not boil, if people didn't already know deep down that abortion is wrong, wrong, wrong.

And because they do, sooner or later, in our lifetime or beyond, there will be a new birth of freedom for the littlest Americans.

Your comments are very much appreciated. Please send them to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

Part One -- "That Which Was Destroyed Can Be Rebuilt"