Marching for the voice-less

Today in weather that is anything but toasty, thousands -- maybe hundreds of thousands -- will march to bring attention to pro-life causes.

This morning in weather hovering near freezing, I'm going to be the main speaker at a rally for the pro-life cause.

I read this a moment ago: Yesterday outside of Washington, D.C., students for life hosted the largest pro-life training of any group ever assembled. Virtually all of them were 17 to 25 years of ago. About 2,500 gathered within hours of today's march in Washington to learn how to organize, help college coeds in the midst of crisis pregnancies, and see technology reveal the story of what abortion does.

Today, the 41st anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, I'm going to speak about what moves me the most, the issue that touches my heart in so many ways. Since 1973, there have been almost 55 million abortions in this country.

We can give lip service to women's rights, and I sort of get that, but what I can't get is why the need to kill the child when it could be avoided so easily by simply giving the child up for adoption. The worst thing, it seems to me, is that these unborn have no voice, whereas every single other entity, class, organization, orientation has one. Usually a loud one. Today we march for the voice-less.

I've never been pregnant, which could some as a shock to anyone seeing my ample girth, but I have been adopted, and I know there is great gobs of love out there for children given up in that manner.

I understand the arguments. I see the need for ample discussion when a woman's life is in danger. I see the debate about incest and rape. And I see the great argument when the children are severely handicapped. I see, hear, feel all those very personal things.

And through it all I remain firm. I do. I don't believe in abortion. I don't.

Nicole, a 19-year-old from Kentucky shares my feeling. She writes,  It was this past spring. The due date's coming up -- I'm dreading it. I wanted to keep it. My boyfriend always had football practice, so he couldn't go to the doctor's appointments with me. If he'd gone, he would have felt differently, but he said, 'No way.' I wanted to show him that I loved him enough to do it for him. When I was 13 weeks, we made an appointment at the closest clinic in Kentucky, four hours away, but the night before, we decided not to go. At two in the morning, he called and said, 'Get dressed.' I said, 'I don't want to go.' We both cried the whole way there. I don't think abortion is killing, but I'd always been against it. When I told him the credit-card scanner at the clinch wasn't working, he asked if I was making it up. We went to get $1,000 from a gas-station ATM. I was hysterical, and he said, 'Okay, you don't have to go back.' I was so happy. Then he said, 'We drove all this way. Stop crying, act like a woman. I was angry, but I was so sleepy and tired of fighting. When I had the ultrasound, I asked for the picture and a nurse said, 'Seriously?' A month later, he said he regretted it too. When I cry about it, I cry alone. He thinks it would make me sad to talk about it, but I don't want our baby to think we forgot."

It's just a story. One story among thousands, millions. One story in which a woman calls her baby "it."

One woman with a horrendous decision to make because we allowed her to.

Thank God that in 1953, when I was born to an unwed young woman, the decision wasn't hers to make or this would be a blank blog today.