THE BELL TOLLS

The Bell Tolls for Thirty Years of Abortion

By Cheryl Sullenger

Three decades have now passed since the Supreme Court decriminalized abortion with the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, yet abortion remains one of the most divisive and sensitive issues in our nation. Considering the far-reaching effects that this "choice" has had on our society, it is no wonder that the controversy continues.

There have been an estimated 42 million abortions over those thirty years, making it the most common surgical procedure in the United States. According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that tracks abortions in America, by age 40, four out of ten women will have had at least one abortion and out of those, 49% will have undergone the procedure more than once. It is hard to find a person in America today that has not been touched in some way by abortion.

Although women are often heard to say that abortion is their private choice to make as they see fit, those words ring hollow when one considers how many people are affected by a decision to abort. First, the pre-born child is killed. There have been far more deaths from abortion than the combined total causalities suffered by American soldiers in all the wars the United States ever fought. There are 42 million Americans missing from our classrooms and workplaces. These would have been our sisters and brothers, our friends and colleagues, our spouses. Who is to say that their lives had no value? Perhaps the scientist who would have discovered the cure for cancer or the diplomat who could have found a way to negotiate peace in our troubled world was never allowed to see the light of day because he or she was an inconvenience to his mother. Because we have been robbed of those who would have been, our lives have all been diminished in ways we can never measure.

Now consider abortion's collateral damage. Women who suffer physical and emotional effects after abortions often have problems with their relationships. Couples split up and marriages end in divorce, especially if the father of the aborted child did not want to lose his baby. Men are relegated to second-class citizens, denied the ability to protect and provide for their families by the woman's "right to choose." The grandparents, siblings, and other relatives are denied the ability to love and be loved by the family member who was aborted. This is not to mention anguish of the childless couples who must wait years for an opportunity to adopt a child because mothers would rather abort than release their children for adoption.

For many, abortion is not about privacy or choice or woman's liberation. It is about loss and human tragedy. Perhaps this is why a recent Zogby Poll showed that support for abortion has eroded to some of its lowest levels in recent years.

When we look at how we, as human beings, are interconnected, sharing our lives together in our families and communities, it is hard to say that thirty years of aborted children has been of benefit to us as a whole. Perhaps it is time to rethink our self-centered attitudes when it comes to childbearing and begin to consider those around us who are adversely impacted by the decisions to abort.

The poet John Donne described how much even one death can affect us all in his famous quote, "No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less... Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee."

On January 22, 2003, the thirtieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the bell will toll for 42 million aborted babies, but it will not toll for them alone. It will toll for us all.