I have been writing for the High School Conservative weekly since May, but this week has been a little different. If you’ve been following my articles you have probably noticed that they almost never have a personal element. I’ve always been bad about only giving the facts – especially when writing essays for school. Most weeks I spend a couple hours scanning over websites like Drudge Report, the Daily Caller, Breitbart, etc. searching for something to write about. If that method doesn’t work, this has been happening a lot as of late, I text Tanner or another co-worker at the High School Conservative and see what they are writing about – occasionally I even ask them for topic ideas for myself. This week I didn’t have that problem – I could feel God laying a certain topic on my heart and on Thanksgiving night I realized my article for this week was going to be much more personal than it had ever been.
I’ve always been pro-life. It’s not because of a Christian upbringing – I didn’t start going to church on a regular basis until the middle of my freshman year in high school, and didn’t experience salvation until my sophomore year. The main factor in my stance on abortion was my parents. I was an unplanned high school pregnancy – my mother was a senior in high school, my dad a couple years older. While they had multiple choices, they picked the mature one – finishing their education, getting married, and raising me.
Until recently I had been pretty moderate on the pro-life issue. I was adamantly opposed to abortion as an alternative to birth control, but believed there should be exceptions when the mother’s life is at risk or the child is the product of rape or incest. Earlier this week I stumbled on an interview with Rebecca Kiessling – a pro-life attorney who was conceived in rape. Kiessling’s mother was abducted at knife-point by a serial rapist and impregnated, but because of Michigan law abortion was not an option. Kiessling told Piers Morgan “I owe my life to pro-life advocates [and] legislators who saw that mine was a life worth saving. And now today my birth mother and I are both thankful.” She went on to describe some fallacies regarding rape victims. She said “One is that most rape victims would want an abortion. They actually choose abortion at half the rate of our average unplanned pregnancy, which is over 50 percent abort in the United States.” The second fallacy Kiessling exposed was much more surprising. She revealed that while “most people think that 90, 95 percent of rape victims would want an abortion and that’s not true.” In all actuality less than 25% of impregnated rape victims choose abortion. Although, my parent’s situation was nowhere near as extreme as Mrs. Kiessling’s parents, I really felt for her. Maybe it was God speaking to me or just a coincidence, but a couple days later I read a status that really shoved my stance in the other direction. A status which said “Ever think the reason we must always pick between the least of two evils during election cycles is because the best candidate was aborted?”
Phrases like “legitimate rape” were a big part of the 2012 election – arguably causing candidates such as Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock their Senate Bids. According to the National Right to Life Council less than 0.5 percent of mother’s abort because of rape or incest, while 93 percent abort for “social reasons.” “Mother’s Health” – which I definitely think should be an exception – accounts for 4 percent of abortions.
A recent CDC report regarding abortion in the United States contained some good and bad news. The bad news: 18 percent of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion. The good news: the rate of abortions in the United States fell by 5 percent. The CDC found that some factors that led to the drop included “the availability of abortion providers, state laws, the general economy, and access to health services.” They also found that “Providing women and men with the knowledge and resources necessary to make decisions about their sexual behavior . . . can help them avoid unwanted pregnancies.”
Pro-choicers are adamant about keeping Roe vs. Wade, while Social Conservatives are ready for it to be overturned. Most people are unaware that Norma McCorvey – the “Jane Roe” of Roe vs. Wade – lied. McCorvey, a young single parent, was persuaded by activist lawyers that she had every right to an abortion. She told Supreme Court Justices that she had been raped, which was not true, and that she didn’t want to keep the baby. Since Roe vs. Wade there have been 56 million legal abortions.
According to a Gallup Poll from earlier this year, the amount of Pro-Choice Americans is at a record low. Gallup wrote “Americans now tilt “pro-life” by nine-point margin, 50% to 41%.” Gallup has been asking Americans about their stance on abortion since 1995. It went from a wide lead for “pro-choice” in the mid 90’s, to a narrow lead for “pro-choice” from 1998-2008, to a wide lead for “pro-life” today. The Gallup survey also found that 52 percent of Americans believe that abortion should only be legal in certain cases.
America is changing – becoming more and more pro-life by the day. While I didn’t get my way during the previous election cycle, I am pretty excited about the future of the pro-life movement – it looks pretty promising. I encourage you to question your own stance on abortion, challenge your friends’ stance, or buy a pro-life t-shirt. I did all three, and sure am glad I did. Maybe, if we’re lucky, in ten years abortion will be obsolete. Americans will be thinking “how the heck did we let that happen?”
