Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Millions are missing

On the thirty-fifth anniversary of Roe v Wade, Ryan Anderson at First Things notes an article in the Los Angeles Times, "Antiabortion cause stirs new generation."
The statistics:
Today’s students and young adults have grown up in a time when abortion was widely accessible and acceptable, and a striking number are determined to end that era.

Pew Research Center polls dating back a decade show that 18- to 29-year-olds are consistently more likely than the general adult population to favor strict limits on abortion. A Pew survey over the summer found 22% of young adults support a total ban on abortion, compared with 15% of their parents’ generation.

Looking specifically at teens, a Gallup survey in 2003 found that 72% called abortion morally wrong, and 32% believed it should be illegal in all circumstances. Among adults surveyed that year, only 17% backed a total ban.
The reasons:
“I feel like we’re all survivors of abortion,” Claire said.

She has five sisters and a brother; most of her classmates, she said, come from much smaller families. The way Claire sees it, they’re missing out on much joy — and she blames abortion.

“I look at my friends,” she said, “and I wonder, ‘Where are your siblings?’”

This sense that millions of their peers are missing motivates many young activists.

They are also the first generations to grow up seeing images from inside the womb displayed like prized family photos — tacked to the fridge, posted on the Web, pasted into scrapbooks. ....

“Abortion feels more personal for us,” said Kristan Hawkins, who supervises 400 college clubs through the group Students for Life of America. [more]

First Things: Roe at 35, Part IV

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