Say No to Roe

A huge advertisement running in trendy magazines these days is hard to miss: In large black letters, the ad asks, "What do you say when they murder your doctor, bomb your clinics, threaten . . . your . . . rights, and peek into your bedroom?" What you should do, the ad tells us, is invoke the legacy of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that gave America essentially abortion on demand. The reference to bombing clinics and peeking into bedrooms is intended, of course, as a description of the prolife movement. The ad is for a compact-disk recording celebrating the twenty-first anniversary of Roe v. Wade, coming up next week. The CD is titled "Just Say Roe," and it features several pop singers, including Madonna. The cover art is nothing short of bizarre, depicting several huge, cracked babydoll heads. But will a CD celebrating abortion sell in America? The market research shows that most pop-music lovers are just saying No. Though the CD has been out since last summer, according to Sound Scan, a company that tracks sales of records and CDs, it never even broke into the top two hundred sales chart. It appears that America's young listeners are not as pro-abortion as some of the big stars like to think. This is something marketers could have foreseen. As long ago as 1989, a poll by the Los Angeles Times found that most women who have abortions prefer to forget the whole experience, not sing about it. Fifty-six percent expressed feelings of guilt over having an abortion. A third said they had come to the conclusion that abortion is murder. Another third said if their daughter wanted an abortion, they would try to dissuade her. It seems that the more closely women experience abortion in their personal lives, the less they feel like celebrating it. And that's not the only sign that the music industry has misjudged its market. A survey recently released by Planned Parenthood's Alan Guttmacher revealed that the number of women undergoing abortions is the lowest in 13 years. More and more younger doctors are refusing to perform abortions. And medical schools are refusing to teach the technique. These trends should come as no surprise to Christians. Children are a gift from God, Scripture tells us—from a God who instilled in both mothers and fathers a strong desire to nurture and protect their children. To go against that strong inner tendency is to invite guilt and emotional devastation. This explains why more than a quarter million people have joined groups offering solace to those who have had abortions—groups with names like Victims of Choice and Women Exploited by Abortion. These people aren't singing; they're lifting their voices in grief over the children they sacrificed on the altar to personal autonomy. In this twenty-first year since abortion was legalized nationally, why don't you find ways to support ministries like these, which reach out to the victims of abortion. To the growing number of women—and men—who wish they had just said "No" to "Roe."

01/16/95