A FATHER TALKS

Wednesday, January 22, 2003
By Dan Zanoza
(ILMediaWatch@illinoisleader.com)

OPINION -- Twenty-seven years ago, my wife and I aborted a child. That decision will haunt us for the rest of our lives.

Since that time, I've developed deep feelings on the subject.

There are two primary reasons why I'm pro-life. The first is that society loses when a child is aborted.

Since the Roe vs Wade decision, close to 40 million unborn babies have lost their lives. The city of Chicago and its surrounding area are home to 5.1 million people. With the number of babies who weren't allowed to live in the past thirty years, Chicagoland's population could have been multiplied eight times.

But more importantly, how many doctors, teachers, poets and engineers will the world miss because of abortion? Maybe one of these aborted children could have discovered a cure for cancer or AIDS. In fact, my very own son or daughter might have developed a cure for the blindness that afflicts me today.

How many handicapped children has our culture missed, teaching us compassion and patience? Are we a different society because of the one out of three children, perfect or not, who were not allowed to survive?

I recently asked a friend who supports abortion rights, “If by some miracle, you knew a pregnant woman's child would one day perfect a treatment that would alleviate a tragic physical malady, would you still believe that woman has the right to terminate the pregnancy, depriving mankind of this discovery?”

It's a rhetorical question that must be pondered before every abortion.

The pro-life contention is simple and straightforward. No one has the right to remove such potential from our society. What the human community has lost due to abortion is incalculable.

That reason alone should be enough to rethink Roe vs. Wade. But there is another reason to be opposed to abortion.

Under Hitler's rule, enforcing death on the innocent was a national right. That madman claimed his nation would be better served through the removal of undesirables -- first through harassment and deportation and, ultimately, by the "final solution" -- which meant death for millions of human beings.

The question has been asked countless times of Germans who lived in that day, “What did you do while this was happening and why didn't you try to stop it?”

There will be a day when that question is asked of us about abortion. We will have to answer, to our next generation, for what we did or did not do to stop a sin against humanity.

While some say the Holocaust bears little resemblance to abortion in America, many believe that tragic episode in world history is comparable to the carnage resulting from the passage of Roe vs Wade.

Women who terminate their babies’ unborn lives are not monsters. If that were so, I'd be saying the same of my wife. The point is, like water, humankind will seek its own moral level by standards set within the culture.

For 197 years in America, abortion was considered a sin against God and man. Yet, one judicial decision in 1973 threw an entire value system into flux, creating moral confusion and societal tumult.

The lines dividing our nation over this issue seem to grow deeper everyday. There needs to be more dialogue and less posturing. And though there may never be a compromise on the subject of abortion, at least there should be an understanding of the passion surrounding the debate.