A Family Tragedy.(Brief Article)

Editor's note. This story and the piece reprinted below from the Weekly Standard both critique an amazing first-person account that ran in the July 7 New York Times magazine.

Ever since I read the anonymous July 7, 2002, editorial entitled "Family Planning," I have been on a roller coaster of rage and tears for a young girl I may never meet. None the less I know her as well as I know myself. A young lady so violated and ignored that even her last desperate cry for respect and support went totally unheard even by her own parents.

Almost 30 years of abortion and the myths about freedom of choice have come full circle as the first generations to reach maturity after Roe v. Wade are now trying to live with our decisions. Decisions that often demand that others do as we did so that we can keep on believing it was the right thing to do.

In the case of this tragic young girl's story the roar of justification, selfishness, and denial of all those around her drowned out her own lonely voice. All her feeble attempts to have her wishes respected went unheard. In the end, she cried out, as her own father admits, but in cowardice refused to hear, "I have no choice!"

My heart felt an ache so piercing for her as I recalled the voices that surrounded me when I was a student and pregnant in 1981. Over and over I was told how childish and stupid it would be for me to give birth to my own child. Planned Parenthood counselors and four abortionists told me to do what my boyfriend wanted because "Since I was pregnant I couldn't think clearly for myself"!

The women who surrounded this poor, young girl are all women I know. Since 1982 I have listened to hundreds of women just like them all over the USA. I have heard the same defiant ones struggle to justify bad and irreversible decisions. The urgency which so many of us bring to this issue is quite disturbing. Many have even become leaders in pro-abortion groups. So much energy is spent making what was so awful somehow feel right. Even sometimes by forcing our own children into the same hopeless situation with no regard for the scars we will burn into their hearts.

I have held still more of these women as they cried tears that never seem to cease. I have worked side by side with those brave ones who have struggled to find real peace by telling the truth about the devastation that their ...