THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, March 4, 1995 TAG: 9503030011
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Another View
SOURCE: By THEODORE R. WOLF
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
There should be more abortions, not fewer.
At least 11,000 more, for instance, if you think babies should not be born to girls 14, 13, even 12 years old.
About 350,000 additional babies are born each year to unmarried American teenagers. How many of these should not be born? One hundred percent? Fifty percent? Ten percent would result in 3,500 more abortions.
It is obvious that unmarried teenagers should not become pregnant. But more than a million kids do each year. Many of them - and their unfortunate children - are condemned to lives of frustration and poverty, with a slim chance of getting off welfare.
It is not only unmarried teens who should avoid having children. Some babies are born to women who are drug addicts or alcoholics. Crack babies will break your heart. They are apt to weigh only 2 or 3 pounds, some with skin so sensitive they can't be covered by even a light blanket. Or held in anyone's arms. They cry a lot. . . .
Even pro-choice people say they abhor abortion. So do I. But I abhor the alternative even more: forcing 1.5 million women to bear babies they desperately do not want.
Once a woman becomes pregnant, abortion is the only alternative to bringing another child into a world that is becoming more crowded every hour - a world whose population will double within 43 years at the present rate of increase. (It is projected to double in 98 years here in the United States.)
If you think we have international problems now, wait until we have twice as many people competing for Earth's limited resources. Or four times as many 86 years from now.
Many pro-lifers believe that a woman's egg becomes a human being at the moment of conception. But the majority of people do not believe that anything 1/50th the size of the head of a pin is a person - any more than a freshly fertilized hen's egg is already a chicken. Do pro-lifers eat bacon and scrambled chicken for breakfast?
Until we figure out how to improve birth control to avoid the millions of unwanted pregnancies throughout the world - and how to persuade teenagers that it is stupid to have babies out of wedlock - we need to make safe and legal abortions readily available.
Someday abortions will become rare. The sooner the better. MEMO: Mr. Wolf lives in Virginia Beach.
by CNB