Karen does not believe that her abortion should be seen as shameful. "All of your past goes into making you who you are," she commented. That amounts to an abdication of moral responsibility disguised as fatalism.

Parents will want to take note of Leland's description of Alicia, a seventeen-year-old girl from Oklahoma who traveled to Little Rock in order to obtain an abortion. Alicia did not have parental consent for her abortion as required by Arkansas law, but she was able to get a judge to bypass parental consent.

Leland describes how clinic staff scheduled Alicia an appointment with a local judge who met with her briefly in his chambers. Dr. Tom Tvedten, one of the doctors who performs abortions at the Arkansas clinic, explained, "If you go to the judge and say, 'I'm afraid to tell my parents because they may harm me,' that's all you need to say. It doesn't have to be true, because how would anybody know?"

Tvedten was more concerned with economic issues and seemed to see abortion as a consumer product. He complained that "every time a restriction is placed on us, it increases our cost, and that cost is passed on to the consumer."

This depressing article contained other items of interest. Dr. Jerry Edwards, the clinic's chief physician, expressed frustration that the local medical community had shunned the clinic and its personnel. "We can't get residents from the hospital to come over and see what an abortion is like," Edwards complained. He went on to express that he felt an obligation to maintain the abortion clinic in Little Rock because, "If we retired, I'm not sure anybody else would come to Arkansas and practice."

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion think tank, the total number of abortion clinics across the nation now stands at 1819 in 2000, down from 2908 in 1982.

Edwards owns the clinic along with his wife, Ann F. Osborne, its director. They acknowledge that they were not accepted by the Little Rock community. As Leland explains, "Even the patients often have a negative view of abortion." Evidently, their view is not sufficiently negative that they would be convinced to carry their babies to term.

The issue of abortion has been front and center in America's culture war for the last four decades. The issue is controversial, and the debate over abortion is often contentious. Nevertheless, the reality of abortion is even uglier, as the stories of these women will make clear. Something is missing from this picture, and that missing element is an acknowledgement that the one factor most glaringly excluded from this consideration is the developing baby. The baby has no voice, no say in the decision, and no advocate in this process. But then, the reporter cannot interview the baby, can he?

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R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. For more articles and resources by Dr. Mohler, and for information on The Albert Mohler Program, a daily national radio program broadcast on the Salem Radio Network, go to www.albertmohler.com . For information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to www.sbts.edu . Send feedback to mail@albertmohler.com .

See also the most recent entries on Dr. Mohler's Blog .