FEELING WORTHLESS:
THE BITTER HARVEST OF "CHOICE"

The killings in a Colorado high school have profoundly disturbed our nation. People speak of a "culture of violence." Some find blame here, others there. There are proposals for laws prohibiting this and that. The effort to understand is earnest. The desire to do something constructive, for the most part, appears genuine. Maybe we have reached a point where we are being serious about turning things around. But have we really understood what is going on in our country?

Given human nature, there is never a shortage of individual and societal behaviors to blame when things go wrong. This time, though, the usual litanies of "what's wrong with this country" or "what's wrong with kids today" seem too inadequate an explanation. More than is usual in such circumstances, there seems to be a sense that things are profoundly wrong.

The country is more prosperous than ever. The stock market is at record levels. Scientific knowledge is exploding. Technology is revolutionizing our work. We are proud to be in the "lead" and "at the forefront" of whatever it is that currently excites us. And all the while we are covering something up.

What we are covering up is more than the proverbial emptiness afflicting modern man. There is something dark and threatening under the smooth exterior of our seemingly well-organized and efficient societal machinery, something that is destroying our nation at its core. You and I know that it is the monster of "choice" that is feeding on the body and soul of this nation.

What does it mean to be rich and prosperous, when the "choice" to kill an unborn child makes life itself worthless? The point is that once we make anyone's right to life contingent on someone else's "choice" then everyone's life has been declared worthless. Paradoxically, this suggests that, as a nation, we are the "worthless" owners of a lot of material wealth.

Mother Teresa's brief before the Supreme Court a few years ago clearly describes the disastrous consequences of "choice." She wrote, "Your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships.... Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be declared contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or a sovereign."

Such talk, of course, does not find favor with the legal and media elites who are insisting that "choice" is a positive good, a glorious achievement of societal progress. Hence people who say otherwise, such as pro-lifers, are labeled as a bunch of backward extremists. To say that "choice" kills, to describe its brutality, to document the damage it inflicts on women, to show how it devastates us spiritually-all this is considered unfit for polite company.

Our country that readily (and often noisily) discusses any problem, real or imagined, is laboring under a pained and awkward restraint when it comes to abortion. One doesn't talk about abortion because one doesn't want to appear backward and against the novel right of "choice." And one doesn't want to confront the horror of abortion because in many instances there is an element of guilt about not having done everything possible to avert this horror.

Young people look, of course, through this charade of pretending that the abortion horror doesn't exist. They know that almost every third member of their generation has been killed to satisfy someone else's "choice."

Unfortunately some will draw dangerous conclusions from the legality of "choice": Life appears not to be a gift of God, but the result of the lucky draw of not having been aborted. Resorting to violent means to solve one's problems is a matter of "choice"-especially if it's an "intensely personal decision." And finally, if I only exist because someone did not exercise the legal "choice" of aborting me, there is no value inherent in my life, or anybody else's, so I might as well be a moral nihilist-anything goes.

Who would have thought that "every child, a wanted child" could lead to this? Well, pro-lifers did think just that.

One hopeful sign that the public is actually getting a better grip on what's ailing us is the declining support for abortion on demand. The latest USA Today/CNN/ Gallup poll (April 30-May 2, 1999) demonstrates this: 16% want abortion to be "illegal in all circumstances," and another 42% want abortion to be "legal only in a few circumstances," for a total of 58% who want unborn children to be generally protected. (12% said that abortion should be legal "under most circumstances," and 27% said abortion should be "legal under any circumstances.")

The percentage of people describing themselves as "pro-choice" has dropped from 56% three years ago to 48% today. In contrast, the percentage of those describing themselves as pro-life rose from 36% to 42%. (Keep in mind how the media have colored the terms "pro-choice" and pro-life.)

As an explanation, a news article on the poll says that "analysts attribute much of the 'pro-life' gains to a political campaign against the late-term procedure described by its opponents as 'partial-birth' abortion."

Of course, the campaign was not "political" but educational and legislative in the truest sense. Moreover, it's also time to drop the quotation marks around the term partial-birth; it is now a legal term adopted by Congress when it twice passed the ban. And finally, partial-birth abortions are not limited to aborting late-term pregnancies. In any event, the soundness of NRLC's strategy is evident again. According to the poll, support for banning partial-birth abortions is today even higher than two years ago (61% today vs. 55% previously), while support for keeping it legal dropped (34% today vs. 40% previously).