In April of 1967, 44 years ago, while spring was budding with the beauty of new life, the first state law legalizing abortion was signed by Colorado’s Governor John Love. The legislation opened the floodgates to nationwide abortion legislation that has now become so permissive as to allow abortion on-demand throughout the country. Since the so-called right of abortion was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States in Roe v. Wade, roughly 52 million children have been aborted in the United States alone.

 The number is so vast that we cannot truly comprehend the scope of it unless we think of it in concrete terms. 52 million people amounts to roughly 1/6 of our entire national population, or almost the total populations of California and Texas combined. If, for example, we were hit by a nuclear strike that completely obliterated the 44 most populated cities in the United States, or the 25 least populated states, we would suffer a loss of human life comparable to that which abortion has wrought.

 The 25 least populated states @ 52 million people

Abortion Facts

The vast majority of American abortions electively terminate pregnancies that were unexpected and in which the child is unwanted. Very few abortions are performed to protect the physical health of the mother, and even fewer abortions are performed to terminate a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest (which consistently account for well under 1% of all abortions in this country).[1] It is concluded that roughly 54% of the women who elected to abort in 2005 employed some sort of contraception in the month that they conceived, but 76% of those taking a pill and 49% of those using condoms admitted that they had not used the method either properly and/or consistently. 8% of women seeking abortions reported that they had never used any form of birth control at all.[2]

 Among the reported reasons for having an abortion, less than 7% had to do with potential health issues of either mother or baby, while the remaining 93% were due to preference or inconvenience.[3] For example, the three most common reasons given for having an abortion were that 1) the baby, if born, would interfere with responsibilities like school and work, 2) the baby would be too much of a financial burden, and 3) that the mother was having relationship problems with the father and/or did not wish to be a single parent.[4]

 Other numbers derived from the Alan Guttmacher Institute indicate that abortion incidence is more evenly spread among income brackets than might be expected. 38% percent of women who had abortions came from family incomes of between $30,000 and $59,999 a year. In fact, women who have incomes of over $30,000 a year make up 51.8% of abortions.[5]  Further, it is estimated that over 50% of abortions are performed on women who have previously had at least one other abortion.[6]

 Abortion in Arizona

The Center for Disease Control reports that, for 2006, close to 11,000 abortions took place in the state of Arizona, ranking us twenty-second out of 47 states and Washington, D.C. for number of abortions performed. (The three states that did not report were California, which is often the highest in abortions performed, Louisiana, and New Hampshire.) Those abortions, when compared to the population of women ages 15-44 in our state, give us a rate of 8.7 abortions per 1,000 women, ranking us at thirty-fifth in the nation on that score. Over 30% of those abortions were performed on women aged between 20 and 24 years, followed by 21.5% in the 25-29 age group and 13.1% aged 30-34. This is comparable to the national average of 33% in the 20-24 age group and 50% occurring under the age of 25.[7]

 Effects on Women

Besides the physical dangers involved with abortion - which include future miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, breast cancer, future premature births, and even death[8] – a host of emotional and psychological maladies often plague women following their abortions. Studies show that women who have aborted a pregnancy frequently present symptoms of psychological and emotional pain and illness at a rate not approached by women who did not experience abortion. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, guilt and regret, anxiety disorders, substance dependency, sexual dysfunction, and self-destructive behavior, among others, are all noticeably present among the population of women who have experienced abortion.[9] The appearance of pain in these women has become consistent enough to warrant the clinical formation of a new syndrome, Post Abortion Syndrome.[10]

 What’s the point?

Humans are set apart from the rest of creation by one thing more than any other, that we are the only creatures made in God’s image. This means that we each have a soul that will persist when our body is gone, a rationality that allows us to act outside of instincts and urges, and a morality that equips us to determine right from wrong. We are born with these basic tools and we are intended to use them to increase our understanding of and obedience to the Creator who endowed us with them.

 The very fibers of our society depend on our collective endeavor to nurture this moral consciousness. Without a respect for the responsibilities that come with the rights we enjoy so freely, and an appreciation for our basic purpose as human beings, we doom ourselves to progressive degeneration morally, physically, socially, spiritually, historically, and in every other way possible.

 This kind of degeneration is, even from a perspective that excludes spirituality, the natural result of the divorce between rights and responsibilities. Our society is structured around the idea that the individual enjoys rights that the community may not infringe upon. These rights are meant to protect the sovereignty of the individual from the abuse, avarice, pressure, and evil of the collective. Equally important is the principle that for every right there is a responsibility. We each have a right to the pursuit of happiness, but with it comes the responsibility to make sure that we are contributing positively to the community as a whole, or that at the very least we are not harming, injuring, or impeding anyone else in their own pursuit.

 Rights divorced from responsibilities lose their sacredness. They become license, which becomes lawlessness, which becomes anarchy. For a society to turn its back on responsibility is for it to initiate its own self-destruction. When the right to pursue happiness is enjoyed without its related responsibilities, it suddenly becomes ‘acceptable’ to end the life of another human being when that being interferes with one’s own pursuit of happiness, as in abortion.

 Yes, we have the right in this country to live our personal lives as we see fit. That includes sexual behavior. But with that right comes a few responsibilities, which exist no matter how long we choose to ignore them. One of those responsibilities is to recognize the potential consequences of our behavior and acknowledge that we are putting ourselves at risk of experiencing them. Pregnancy is the result of sex and sex alone; there has only been one exception to that in history.[11] Sex is, in the vast majority of cases, the result of a conscious decision made by both the man and the woman that they will join in an activity that is likely to result in pregnancy.

 It is up to each woman, and to every man as well, to decide if he or she will put himself or herself at risk for a pregnancy. There are a million choices that precede pregnancy, a plethora of opportunities in which a woman may decide what to do with her body. By the time she has conceived a child, the time for choices is up. It is now time to take responsibility for her actions and accept the consequences of her decisions. Similarly, it is now up to the father to accept that he has begun a new life, and that he may not excuse his own irresponsibility by pressuring or otherwise forcing his partner to terminate the child’s life.

 When a child is conceived, another life is introduced into the equation, one that should have all of the same rights and immunities under the law as its mother. When we hear pro-abortion advocates insist, then, that every woman should have the power to do with her body what she wishes, we don’t necessarily disagree; we just want that woman to take responsibility for the consequences that follow from her choices. And let’s not forget that no matter how many sophistic arguments are injected into the debate, the taking of an innocent human life is wrong.

 The debate, as it turns out, really isn’t about the freedom of the mother or her ability to make choices for herself. It is about the coupling of rights and responsibilities; it’s about using the rationality and morality we are born to employ. On the grander scale, it’s about nurturing the moral consciousness that will determine the strength and character of our nation.

 So to those who are pro-choice, I say, I am pro-choice too. I believe that every woman has the right to choose how she will act. Clearly, under our current legal system, she even has the choice to decide whether or not her baby will live. But to this choice she does not have a right, while to the child she does have a responsibility. Let’s make our society one that values rights and responsibilities, children and adults, freedom and morality. We will have to follow the Lord to achieve it.