Women's Lives and Post-Abortion Syndrome, 30 Years Later A Long, Cold Journey to the Truth.(Column)

Thirty years ago on a cold wintry day in January 1973, a terrible deception was perpetrated on tens of millions of American women. Slogans replaced truths and over 43 million unborn children paid with their lives.

Thirty years after Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton were handed down by the Supreme Court, women are still paying a heavy price. But I am glad to say, at long, long last, the truth--that abortion kills children and devastates women--is beginning to emerge.

Remembering that terrible day, on the anniversary of those horrid decisions, I was proud to join with women from across the country who announced to the world in front of that very same Supreme Court building that they would be "Silent No More." Karen Cross explains the significance of that gathering in her story on page 34. Here I would like to discuss another important development: the growth of an entire ministry dedicated to healing post-aborted women around the world.

Future generations will look back at the history of legalized abortion in America and question how intelligent women and men could be so deceived as to fight to legalize and then maintain abortion. Partly, it was because they were sold a bill of goods--that abortion was an "answer" to so many social and personal problems.

This lie persuaded them to avoid seeking real answers, answers that respect the dignity of both mothers and their children. Their blindness has helped perpetuate a "procedure" that degraded women and takes the lives of some 1.3 million babies each year in the United States alone.

As a result of the Supreme Court's decisions which made abortion legal through all nine months of pregnancy in all 50 states for any reason at all, millions of women, including myself, are bereft of our children and sick at heart. Some of us have been physically scarred by our abortions.

Many of us have felt emotionally overwhelmed by despair, anger, and grief. All of us have been damaged by decisions that so carelessly cheapened the value of the lives of our children. But there is hope.