Roe v. Wade

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With today marking the 35th anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling on the Roe v. Wade abortion case, it is appropriate to examine where the nation is headed on the issue of life.

There have been more than 48.5 million abortions in the United States since Roe was decided, according to tallies analyzed by the National Right to Life Coalition. This staggering figure alone gives reason to pause. There is another trend as well. Data released last week by the Guttmacher Institute shows the number of abortions declined by 8 percent between 2000 and 2005, from 1.31 million to 1.21 million. This is the lowest total since the 1.18 million abortions tallied in 1976. Also, the 2005 abortion rate of 19.4 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44 was the lowest since the 19.3 percent abortion rate in 1974.

No doubt this decline in the prevalence of abortion is due to increased efforts to educate girls and women about the consequences of sex, pregnancy and abortion. The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, upheld last year by the Supreme Court in the case of Gonzales v. Carhart, also helps further explain the realities of late-term abortion.

While politicians and activists have much debated the question of whether human life begins at conception, in the womb or outside it, we should give ear to former President Reagan, a convert to the pro-life movement, who in 1983 wrote that "when we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives — the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child... Anyone who doesn't feel sure whether we are talking about a second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the doubt. If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn."

Indeed, we must guard life with the vigilance due to our most vulnerable population: the unborn.