What if...

A new book by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter plays the entertaining parlor game, "What if?" You know...what if an assassination attempt on Roosevelt had been successful...what if Kennedy had chosen to use the bubbletop on his limo, that dark day in Dallas? It's both compelling and instructive to ponder such possibilities. But today on our show, a newscaster posed the poignant query, "“What would happen if Roe v. Wade were to be overturned?"

 

The answer was a litany of precautions and reactions one could expect in certain states across America. We took the question, though, a step further: What would truly happen in America, should Roe v. Wade be overturned?

 

Now--granted--there would still be unwanted pregnancies caused by rape or incest, a truly sad circumstance.  But such occurrences would be rare, in comparison to the exponentially-larger number of those which result from sheer carelessness. So let's talk it through. Without easy access to abortion, those who are unmarried and in full possession of a conscience would be forced to stop and consider the long-term implications of casual sex. Of course, we'd hope they'd choose to abstain from unprotected, extramarital activity...but even if the absence of abortion only compelled these couples to use condoms, the rate of HIV infection, as well as that from many other STDs would drop dramatically. That's even before we talk about the sharp drop in out-of-wedlock pregnancies.

 

But let's project our hypothetical even further. What if our society said that killing human babies is wrong--what message would that send? It would telegraph the kind of hope that generations of entitlement programs, self-esteem teaching in our schools, "I'm OK-You're OK" psychiatry, and the over-arching religion of tolerance never could. It would send the message that our government believes every life--every person--is special, and worthy of protection. Wouldn't you love to hear that? Don't your children need to believe it? Ask any woman who's had an abortion how she feels about her own life, once her baby's is terminated. Many wonder that, if my child is disposable, then perhaps I am, too.

 

So, until we finally overturn Roe--and we will--God offers us an opportunity that is only available to us, while we're here on Earth: He has placed before us life and death. Let us choose life, that both we--and our descendants--may live.