by Brenda Bowers

Created on: May 03, 2008

It has been said it takes a village to raise a child. Perhaps, but I believe it merely takes two loving parents. What I do know is that it takes a village to kill a baby.

The thought of abortion doesn't suddenly spring up unaided from out of the blue. The seeds of abortion are sown early and cultivated by many hands. The seeds of abortion are the behaviors of individuals that are condoned by society that can ultimately lead to the act of abortion either directly or indirectly. *

Some have claimed "Lots of women don't really want to have an abortion, but feel compelled to do so by family, boyfriends, etc.". As a counselor in a Planned Parenthood Clinic I advised women on alternatives to abortion. While I can honestly say I have never seen a woman dragged kicking and screaming into an abortion clinic, I can as honestly say that only a few women were there without deep sorrow and regret for what they felt they had to do. And only a mere handful come to that decision on their own without the verbal or tacit urging of another.

An interestingly side issue: from my notes I was able to classify the small group of women who apparently had no qualms about choosing abortion. This is not to say that they did not have the urging of another, but that by the time they had arrived at the point where they felt the need of this drastic procedure they had already been conditioned well to the acceptance of abortion as just another medical procedure to "cure" them of an unwanted "growth" that had invaded their bodies. These women seemed to fall into three categories regardless of age and race: well dressed sophisticated career women or middle class homemakers, those who appeared almost bored with the entire procedure and were poorly dress indicating low incomes, and teen-aged girls who were simply frighten and to whom the baby had no reality. It seemed to me then by deduction that the level of education had much to do with the ease of acceptance of abortion. The better educated and the less educated appeared to share the same attitudes and from these disparate educational advantages still rationalize abortion as unrelated to morality. Whereas those of average education were more apt to see their actions in a moral light and although they were determined to abort their child they did see the fetus as a child and the action as a "kind of murder" as one once told me. All but the teenagers to whom the baby had no reality, had been conditioned by their life experiences, relationships,

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