FORGETTING IS EASY
by David Sisler
Do you remember your own birth? Things that were said? The way you were handled? The slap that encouraged you to breathe?
A researcher in San Diego says it is possible to remember exacting details. On the basis of an interview with one patient, he started doing research. The patient, under hypnosis, described, step by step the process of his birth.
Then he located an obstetrician in San Francisco who for 20 years had been doing research on the same subject.
The physician found that certain severe headaches were associated with the rough way the forceps were handled when the individual was being born. He attributed asthma to the panic of the child at the moment of birth. And most interestingly, the obstetrician stated that long-term neurosis could be attributed to the comments of the attending physician, or the mother, at the time of birth.
The doctor verified his research by checking with the patients' mothers, and the mother confirmed that certain things happened, certain unusual things were said. Significantly, these were statements that the mothers had never discussed with their children, including the comment of one mother that she did not want to have this child.
If this research is valid, most of us have forgotten our beginnings. Forgetting is easy. Remembering is hard. Sometimes we simply do not wish to remember.
Maybe you can understand then, the conflicting emotions generated when Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" of Roe Vs. Wade recently announced she had quit her job at Dallas' "A Choice For Women" clinic and joined Operation Rescue.
In 1970 Sarah Weddington and Linda Coffee were attorneys looking for a plaintiff so they could challenge the nation's abortion laws. That's when they met Norma McCorvey, an ex-carnival barker who claimed to have been gang-raped--she later admitted that the unwanted pregnancy was the result of passion, not rape. Because of Texas law, she was unable to end her pregnancy. She always resented the fact that Roe was resolved too late for her to abort. Far from being an active, interested party in the litigation, McCorvey did not learn of the Supreme Court Decision until she saw it in a newspaper.
It is easy to forget. Remembering is hard.
Norma McCorvey remembered one day. She put her feet in the stirrups and tried to imagine what it would be like to have an abortion. She said, "Oh, God, what have I been doing?" From that moment, she says, she could not go into the back of the abortion clinic again.
Pro-abortionists claim that abortion is necessary because the death of the child may save the life of the mother. In a survey conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, only four percent of the women surveyed, would have had their health endangered if the pregnancy continued (former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said that in 35 years of practice, "Never once did a case come across my practice where abortion was necessary to save the mother's life").
From the same Planned Parenthood survey, only one percent were victims of rape or incest. Only one percent of the unborn showed fetal abnormalities.
But 50 percent of the women said they didn't want to be a single parent, 66 percent said they could not afford the child, and 75 percent of the mothers-not-to-be said the births of the babies they were carrying in their bodies would interfere with their lifestyles!
Ninety-five percent of the children destroyed by abortion died for reasons of convenience.
While we are talking numbers, consider these:
1,160,581 American soldiers died in all of the combined battles from the Revolutionary War, through the Vietnam War. Statistics from the Guttmacher Institute reveal that 1,600,000 babies are aborted every year. Since 1973, when Roe Vs. Wade became the law of the land, 20 million babies--three every minute--have died from abortion procedures-- almost all of them because it was more convenient for them to die than to live.
Forgetting is easy. Remembering is hard.
Editorial cartoons are not necessarily funny. They are intended to provoke thought. The following one was presented in six frames:
"He kissed me and I melted."
"My heart pounded at his touch."
"His embrace sent the blood coursing through my veins."
"I was overcome with passion. I couldn't refuse."
"Well, now I'm pregnant and I want an abortion."
"After all, a woman should have control over her own body."
Forgetting is easy. Remembering is hard.
If it took you five minutes to read this column, remember, in that length of time, fifteen babies died because their mothers chose abortion. Please. Don't forget.
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Published in the Augusta Chronicle 8/26/95
Copyright 1995 by David Sisler
Your comment is welcome. Write to me at: n4so@hotmail.com