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Even to write about the 1991 Battle of the Wichita Abortion Clinics is to give Operation Rescue what it so desperately craves: publicity.
Plenty of TV footage, $500,000 in police overtime,
comments from President Bush, death threats to a federal
judge -- This has been our most successful event ever .
. . when the President is in his golf cart, talking about
us, how could we not love that?
said the Rev. Pat
Mahoney, an Operation Rescue leader.
He's also an outside agitator, since he lives in Boca Raton, Fla. For that matter, about half of the 2,000 arrested demonstrators are not from Wichita.
Instead of importing demonstrators to harass women who already have enough trouble, Operation Rescue ought to look at the public debate on abortion that occurred 20 years ago.
In the late 1960s and early 70s, abortion was a political matter handled by state legislatures. Colorado adopted one of the nation's most liberal abortion laws in 1966; shortly thereafter, California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed a similar bill.
The old arguments in favor of legalized abortion make for curious reading now. Then we heard that if abortion were legal, every child would be a wanted child. No more neglected or abused children, since each baby would be the result of free choice by consenting adults who would eagerly fulfill the responsibilities of parenthood.
And once women were freed from unwanted pregnancies,
they could become full participants in American economic life. No more pregnant 14-year-olds forced to drop out, no more shotgun marriages, no more single mothers living in poverty, no more careers arrested by the stork -- women would be in charge of their own lives.
Legalized abortion came in 1973 with the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade. But have we seen any of its promised benefits in the past 18 years?
In 1980, there were 3.5 cases of child abuse or neglect per 1,000 people; in 1987, there were 8.3, an increase of 137 percent. In 1970, unmarried women had 10.7 percent of the babies born in America; in 1987, 24.5 percent of American babies were born out of wedlock, an increase of 129 percent.
Women earn 64 cents for every dollar that men make, and
we read often of the glass ceiling
and the
pink-collar ghetto.
The number of single mothers
living in poverty continues to rise, from 13.5 million in
1979 to 16.9 million in 1987.
These sad statistics could continue indefinitely, but the conclusion is clear. Legalized abortion is like most candidates for high office: it has delivered on precisely none of its promises. The utopia of cherished children and prosperous women has never come to pass.
That's something Operation Rescue might focus on. However, such a campaign would require an appeal to reason instead of emotions, and that is beyond the capability of its publicity-hungry leadership.
For my part, I'm pleased. Even if legalized abortion never did what it was supposed to do, abortion should be a woman's decision, and it will stay that way as long as Operation Rescue is run by fools.
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