Letter 107

A woman who favors legal abortion has asked, "If women are denied access to abortion, who will pay for all those unwanted children?"

If we were having this debate before we legalized abortion, it could be legitimately argued that abortion might reduce the number of unwanted children. However, that's not the case. We are having this debate after over twenty years of experience with the horror of abortion. We're not predicting future results, but living with past ones.

Since abortion was legalized, teen pregnancy has skyrocketed. The number of children living in poverty has steadily grown. More and more children are living in single-parent households. Every misery that women and children can be forced to live under has gotten worse.

Those whose goal is to protect the multi-billion-dollar abortion industry want people to believe that ending abortion will worsen a problem that legalizing abortion helped to create. I think the fact that they want to blame us for their failures shows exactly how deceitful they are. It's the big-lie theory: The bigger lie you tell, and the more often you tell it, the more people will believe it.

Letter 108

Pro-abortion extremists often ask, "If women are denied access to abortion, who will pay for all those unwanted children?"

You know, the pro-abortionists have had over 20 years to weed out the people they don't want. And no one can argue that they've been stingy in handing out death sentences. They've killed over 30 million babies, and are still screaming that there are too many unwanted babies. Meanwhile, we have more criminals than ever, more gang members, more welfare moms, and more drug addicts. In fact, there isn't a single class of people abortion was supposed to eliminate that hasn't grown in the past 20 years.

Did it ever occur to these rabid abortion fanatics that maybe--just maybe--all their screaming about how poor people ought to be killed because they're unwanted has contributed to the growing hostility in this country? That maybe hearing from birth that you are unwanted, useless, and should have been killed in the womb makes you lash out?

Instead of killing children, maybe we should re-examine this whole idea of "unwantedness" and learn to be more welcoming and accepting.

Letter 109

Pro-abortion extremists sometimes say, "If women are denied access to abortion, who will pay for all those unwanted children?"

Isn't it sad that we live at a time when there are people willing to tell mothers that an unplanned pregnancy always produces an unwanted baby? It's like the kid who tells his little brother that chocolate cake is made of mud--not to spare the brother the cake, but to get it for himself. Abortion fanatics need to convince the woman that her unplanned baby will ruin her life and that she'll never love it; that way she'll buy an abortion. Conversely, every time a mother decides she does want her baby, or that she's going to place it with a loving adoptive family who wants it, the pro-choicers lose.

This whole "unwanted child" mentality is a fraud perpetrated by the abortion industry to create a demand for their product.

Letter 110

Abortion opponents often argue, "If women are denied access to abortion, who will pay for all those unwanted children?"

Inane arguments like this are a major contributor to the anger felt by true feminists toward those people who masquerade as feminists to protect the abortion industry. Taking this kind of position not only makes women look hypocritical, but it gives credence to the stereotype that women are self-centered and irrational. This whole issue is just one more reason why the historic feminist position on abortion has always been--and will always be--pro-life, not pro-abortion. The legitimate feminist knows better than to claim that her value is not based on a man wanting her, while maintaining that her child's value is based on whether she wants him. As Suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we wish."

Letter 111

Advocates of legal abortion have asked, "If women are denied access to abortion, who will pay for all those unwanted children?"

Has anybody but me noticed that we never had all this talk about hoards of "unwanted" children until these rabid abortion enthusiasts came on the scene? The truth is, the abortion industry created the "disease of unwantedness" in order to have a market for their product.

How many baby boomers were planned? I would guess that very few of us were. I dare say a lot of abortion advocates owe their lives to the fact that their own mothers weren't bombarded with this "every child a wanted child" nonsense.

It is the attitude of the woman, and the people around her, that makes an "unwanted" child. There is no "unwantedness" gene. There is nothing in that baby that makes him or her an unwanted or unwantable human being. In fact, even though his mother may have been brainwashed into not wanting him, there are millions of adoptive families that want him very much.

It's about time we dropped this whole crusade to kill off the "unwanted" children. Civilized societies don't kill people just because someone else doesn't want them. Live and let live.

Letter 112

Pro-abortion extremists have often asked, "If women are denied access to abortion, who will pay for all those unwanted children?"

I might have been able to respect the question if an abortion advocate had asked it 25 years ago. Back then, there was a theory that abortion would eliminate, or at least reduce, unintended pregnancy. But by the early 1970s, the pro-choice community knew better. Abortion guru Christopher Tietze pointed out that women who aborted had more pregnancies than women who did not. The Population Council published a study showing that easy access to abortion led to irresponsible sexual behavior. Irresponsible sexual behavior leads to unintended pregnancies. This is not theory. This is fact--a fact that the pro-choicers may admit among themselves but dare not speak in public.

What abortion leads to is not wanted and loved children. It leads to more and more unintended pregnancies, more abortions, more heartbreak. We're not predicting future results, but living with past ones.

Thirty-two million dead babies haven't made our families stronger, or our children more secure. They have done the opposite. It's time we learned from experience and ended this grotesque practice.

Letter 265

Pro-choicers have said that pro-lifers "never give a thought to the children who will be abused if women lose the right to bear only loved and wanted children."

Even if one is able to ignore the obvious--that abortion is child abuse of the worst kind--there is another major flaw in this line of "reasoning." Doesn't it seem odd that we would try to eliminate a crime by killing its potential victims? One might just as well eliminate wife-beating by killing all the married women in the world, or wipe out police brutality by allowing cops to shoot suspects on sight.

These examples show the utter insanity of suggesting that a nation can prevent harm to its children by encouraging their mothers to kill them. For proof, consider the fact that child abuse has skyrocketed since abortion was legalized, a reality that pro-choicers seem to conveniently ignore.

What none of us can ignore is that we have killed 34 million babies since the legalization of abortion, and child abuse is higher than ever. Kind of makes you wonder why we killed all those babies. Why don't we kill a few million more and see what happens? Who knows, if we kill enough it just might work. One day.

Letter 266

Pro-choicers have said that pro-lifers "never give a thought to the children who will be abused if women lose the right to bear only loved and wanted children."

Child psychologist and psychiatrist Dr. Philip Ney's comments on this notion were published in Child Psychiatry and Human Development (Spring 1983). He said that, in Canada, "You used to hear, ‘There should be abortions, because we don't want unwanted children.' You don't hear that any more. I think we've pretty well nailed the lid on the coffin of that silly thing. There is absolutely no evidence that abortion provided virtually on demand has done anything to improve the rate of child abuse and neglect. The best evidence shows that it increases the rate of child abuse and neglect." He also said that the evidence linking abortion to child abuse "is strong enough to make you really concerned. It is as strong as the early evidence linking cigarettes and cancer."

So, over 20 years ago, we had a theory that abortion would reduce child abuse. Since abortion was legalized, child abuse has skyrocketed. And we have research showing that it is probably not a coincidence--that abortion contributes to child abuse.

I'd say the abortion-as-a-cure-for-child-abuse experiment was an utter failure.

Letter 267

Pro-choicers have said that pro-lifers "never give a thought to the children who will be abused if women lose the right to bear only loved and wanted children."

Dr. Philip Ney is a psychiatrist and child psychologist who became alarmed at the growing incidence of child abuse. He did a factor analysis to discover what might be contributing to the problem. He discovered that one factor in the lives of children was linked to the increase in abuse: their mothers had undergone elective abortions.

Ney has spent two decades since then studying the dynamics of the link between abortion and child abuse. The factors he believes are at work include suppressing the mother's instinct to protect her children, eroding the taboo against harming the defenseless, causing dissent between the parents due to the man's helplessness in the abortion situation, and maternal guilt or depression from the abortion.

Ney has said, "I am not anti-abortion...If anybody would like to demonstrate that abortion is therapeutic, I will do it. I have said that now for over 15 years, and nobody has challenged me. You would think somebody would say, ‘All right--here are the indications: you do it.' The fact of the matter, of course, is that there is no reliable evidence that abortion is good for anything."

If it's not therapeutic for the mother, and it increases child abuse--why are we doing it?

Letter 287

In Saturday's editorial, a pro-choicer said, "Right-to-lifers claim to be pro-family, but they never consider the strain an unwanted child places on a family."

First, this pro-choicer makes the absurd assumption that an unplanned pregnancy means an unwanted child. I think if we thought about our own family and friends, we'd realize that most of us started our lives as unplanned pregnancies. Not all of us made life unbearable for our families.

Second, if aborting unplanned pregnancies reduced strain on families, wouldn't families be stronger after more than 20 years of unfettered abortion? You would think that killing over 30 million unwanted children would have ended divorce and child abuse. Instead, the divorce rate and child abuse have skyrocketed. Did we kill the wrong 30 million, or wasn't 30 million enough?

Abortion advocates seem unwilling to accept reality: killing a child puts more of a strain on the family than letting one live. After all, as Robert Frost said, "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in." Abortion changes the meaning of "home" to "the place where, if they don't want you around, they can always kill you." How secure can a child be when he knows his family already killed his baby brother or sister?

A family used to be the people you stood by through thick and thin. Abortion redefines family as "those people you feel like dealing with." How that can make families stronger is a mystery to me.

Letter 288

In her letter yesterday, a pro-choicer accused pro-lifers of being "insensitive to the strain an unwanted child places on the family."

Even if an "unwanted" child was a strain on the family, does that justify killing him?

One Arizona couple faced eviction from their home because of the woman's son. Neighbors said he was "always wrecking stuff" and "zapping pigeons with a BB gun." Clearly he was more than just a strain on his family--he was ruining their lives. So the couple made a painful decision. But their plan went awry when the hit man they tried to hire turned out to be an undercover cop.

Why is it okay to kill a child because you think you might not want him, but not okay to kill a child that you know is ruining your life?

Pro-choicers might point out that the troublesome son was 20 years old. But that isn't relevant. After all, he was obviously dependent on them. The pro-choice argument is that mothers should be allowed to say when life begins. Maybe this guy's mom believes that life begins when you get a job and move out. Who are pro-choicers to judge her, or to tell her how to live her life? She and her husband at least gave the kid a chance to live for 20 years. The family that aborts doesn't even bother to meet the child and see if they like him or not.

Unless pro-choicers are willing to excuse people for killing their born children who terrorize the neighborhood, they shouldn't ask us to excuse people for killing a kid who had harmed no one.