“A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning, and great weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted,
because her children are no more.”
— Jeremiah 31:15
Thirty-seven years year ago abortion-on-demand was born in America. Conceived during the “free-love” revolution of the 1960s and gestated by the self-indulged baby boomers, abortion was delivered to the nation by an activist Supreme Court on Jan. 22, 1973. Today, the Roe v. Wade decision stands as the epitome of judicial usurpation of the legislative process.
From these murky origins, abortion has matriculated into adulthood. Along the way it has gathered its own steam. Abortion is now the undisputed law of the land, but it is still an emotional and divisive issue that may be one of the key factors that unhinges Obama’s health care makeover.
But the truth is, abortion transcends politics and how our society ultimately deals with it will determine what historians will say about our culture.
My odyssey from being a pro-choice believer to a pro-life advocate occurred during my internship in pediatrics at UCLA. During those months of training in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), while caring for the smallest of premature infants, I began to reconsider my views about abortion. The humanity of these tiniest of people was clearly evident. But what wore me down was the schizophrenia of what was going on in the hospital. How could pediatricians on one end of this great hospital struggle at great financial and emotional cost to save the lives of some babies while at the other end of the very same hospital, children of the same gestation age were being aborted. This incongruity sparked a struggle in my mind. I became a student of abortion and as I became more informed, my opinion changed.
The proponents of abortion made several claims before legalization occurred. One of their first assertions was that abortion would reduce the incidence of child abuse. They were dead wrong. In 1973, there were 167,000 reported cases of child abuse. Compare that to the staggering 3.5 million cases of child abuse and neglect that were reported in 2005. Today, nearly four children die each day from abuse.
Abortion did not cure child abuse. In fact, it has skyrocketed over 2,000 percent over the past 37 years.
Next, abortion activists predicted that abortion would reduce poverty. Again they were wrong. Instead, poverty has become “feminized” and women and children now constitute the new poverty class in America.
Third, with their mantra “every child a wanted child,” feminists promised that life itself would become more precious than ever before. This too proved to be fatuous. Infanticide, physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are being advocated around the country and, in some states, are now legalized. Life has not become more precious, it is now more disposable that ever before.
Finally, the most disingenuous claim of the proponents of abortion was the prediction that it would “empower” women. This too turned out to be utter fantasy. Ask any woman who has been forced to have an abortion by their boyfriend if they feel empowered. Speak to the women who tragically aborted the only child they would ever conceive and who now languish in nulliparous obscurity about empowerment.
Empowerment for both women and men comes from self-control and discipline, not from the blatant disregard of human life.
These are the broken promises of the abortion industry, but this is not what motivates the pro-life movement. Instead, they are appalled by the procedure itself.
Pro-lifers are repulsed by the sharpened curettes that dismember a fetus before it is “evacuated” from the womb. They are nauseated by the hypertonic saline solution that burns before it kills the small baby. They are sickened by the spear-like “tocar” that is thrust into the base of the fetal skull in late-term abortions to suction out the infant’s brain (and kill the child) before the child’s body can be “delivered.”
The abortion industry has shielded the American public from these realities with clever euphemisms for 37 years! But, behind their verbal vagaries is a premeditated, violent act that terminates the life of a defenseless human being. Since 1973, roughly 50 million children have been denied their right to life.
Pro-lifers are pro-life because they understand the deed.
The debate over abortion is far from over and when a shocked American public understands the stark truths concerning the acts of abortion, they will surprise the politicians and the abortion industry and do what I did nearly 30 years ago: they’ll become pro-life.
Dr. Robert Hamilton is a pediatrician with a private practice in Santa Monica. He has been practicing medicine for 25 years.
