There are many moments in our lives that are so significant that they remain indelibly etched into our memories. I'd like to share such a moment with you.
      It was January 1, 1974. The pregnancy had been short and difficult. The baby had to be born, there was no choice, or both of us would die. She was only 24 weeks gestation--five and one-half months.
       "The baby's chances are zero," the doctor told my husband and me. "It won't be a live birth." But she was kicking and flailing about all through the birth process. I could feel her, as if she was saying, "No! No! I don't want to go!"
       At that moment all eyes in the room were on her tiny body. The doctor looked surprised as he held, literally in the palm of his hand, the tiniest baby I'd ever seen, and she was still kicking and flailing her legs and arms. She was doing something else, too. She was crying at the top of her lungs. Wailing, just like any newborn baby, but you could barely hear her. Her vocal chords were not developed.
       The doctor looked at my husband and me. "Her chances are slim, and even if she survives, she'll probably be physically and mentally handicapped. Do you want to try and save her or dispose of her?" We both answered simultaneously, "Save her!" The nurses quickly wrapped the tiny infant in a receiving blanket and hurried her off to the nursery where she was placed in an isolet.

"The baby's chances are zero," the doctor told my husband and me. "It won't be a live birth." But she was kicking and flailing about all through the birth process. I could feel her, as if she was saying, "No! No! I don't want to go!"

       There are a lot of misconceptions about what a fetus is, what a baby of 20, 22 or 24 weeks is like. Despite the uproar over Roe v. Wade going on at the time, I'd never thought about an abortion. But the birth of our daughter forced me to examine this issue.
       First, did you ever think a fetus in the second trimester felt pain? Did you know they actually cry? Our baby cried at birth. She was in pain and distress and showed it.
       I stood over her isolet, feeling helpless. I began to wonder about abortions. Her features were perfectly formed. She had fingernails and toenails, eyes, nose and mouth. When I realized that she was a second trimester fetus and how many like her are aborted each year, I felt sick in the pit of my stomach.
       A nurse came over to encourage me. "She's a fighter," she said. "She's going to make it. She wants to live." What a revelation! Did you ever consider that a fetus has a will to live?
       I went to the library and got some books on preemies. There had to be something I could do to help her win that fight. I found a study done in the 1940s. It wanted to know if it was better to isolate severely premature babies and avoid human contact and risk of infections. The babies without human contact died. The babies who interacted with people had a 20% survival rate.
       The next day, I couldn't wait for the doctor to arrive. I told her what I'd found and she agreed. Nurses showed me how to scrub up and, donning mask and smock, I sat beside our baby's isolet and stroked her face, held her hand and talked to her. I spent as much time as I could with her. When you hear the word "fetus" do you think of something that responds to love and nurturing?
       We named our daughter Jessica. Later we found the name means "the Lord's grace." It's a fitting name. Jessica taught us fetuses feel pain. They cry. They are unique individuals worth their own personalities. Jessica taught us that fetuses have the will to live. They fight for their lives. They don't want to die. Just like you and me, they want to live. And Jessica taught us that they respond to human contact and love. There is no question about it.
       And what happened to Jessica? On Jan. 1, 1974 she made her startling entry into the world, three and one-half months ahead of schedule, a little over two pounds.
       Last May, Jessica graduated from the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., a college that accepts only 5% of its applicants based on a formula of academic, athletic and leadership achievement. Obviously, the doctor's prediction did not come to pass. Can you imagine if we had listened to him and discarded her? I can't imagine that. The doctor was wrong.
       President Clinton handed Jessica her diploma and commission. Next time the partial birth abortion bill comes to him, I hope he'll stop and think about what a fetus really is. It's a human being.

      I don't know why people are surprised that a society that legalizes and condones the killing of innocent children has become in all areas brutish, violent and corrupt.
       A civilization cannot be segmented or compartmentalized. You can't say to young people, it is wrong to kill or use violence, except in the case of unborn children. How can you make a moral case against the entertainment industry, as vile and corrupt as it is, and at the same time support an industry that kills children in large numbers?
       In 2000 B.C., the Assyrian Code had this to say about abortion: "If a woman of her own accord drops that which is in her, they shall crucify her and not bury her."
       The Hippocratic Oath which some doctors ignore these days, says, "I will not give to a woman an instrument to procure abortion." Even pagans, long before the advent of Christianity recognized the wrongness of killing the innocent.
       How can people complain about incivility and then condone the killing of babies? How weird to prosecute a woman for damaging the child in her womb by taking crack cocaine when the same government condones the same woman killing the same child in a abortion clinic? How can you prosecute a man who kills a child in the womb with a gun, but not prosecute a man who kills a child in the womb with forceps and saline solutions?

"People should understand what abortion is: It is using death to solve a problem.

       The above two examples are blatant contradictions in the law. When you see contradictions in the law, then you know that you live in a society that is not governed by the rule of law but is instead a society governed by whim, political pull, fads and arbitrary decisions.
       An American consensus? Of course there is no consensus today, and no consensus is possible between people who have no respect for life and people who believe life is sacred. Consensus is common agreement that presupposes common beliefs. There are no common beliefs between those who condone the killing of the unborn and those who oppose it.
       People should understand what abortion is: It is using death to solve a problem. This new life, a creature of God, is inconvenient or too expensive or too troublesome. So terminate it. Laws and court decrees that legitimate abortion are laws and court decrees that legitimize the murder of the innocent.
       What is the moral difference between a robber who kills a store clerk and an abortionist who kills a child? Neither the store clerk nor the child had done anything to merit death. Neither was a threat to anyone's life. Both were creatures of God. Both, if we believe the Declaration of Independence, were endowed by God with unalienable rights among which is life.
       There are a lot of lives that are inconvenient or expensive or troublesome to maintain: the severely retarded, the severely disabled, the elderly, the terminally ill. How long do you think it will take for a society that condones killing babies as a solution to social or economic problems to get around to killing others for the same reason? The arguments for death are exactly the same. The economics and the efficiency are all on the side of death.
       This decaying society elevates rationalization to the status of argument, but evil is not something solid that can be contained and segregated. It is more like gas, which once let loose permeates the whole area. You can't get away with condoning murder over here and condemning it over there. Condone it anywhere and you create a brutal, violent society.
       To put the matter bluntly, when consensus fails, when too many people share completely contradictory beliefs and values, there are only in the long run two possible outcomes: war in which one group imposes by force its beliefs on the other; or separation. We need to think seriously about what we are doing to ourselves in this country.

      Currently up for adoption at all Texas high schools are the most pro-evolutionary Biology I books ever published. None of these books discuss scientific weaknesses in evolution theories, as state rules require. The worst is Prentice Hall's Biology: The Living Science. We have full written critiques of it, including a devastating analysis by a medical doctor, who served on this year's state textbook review panel. You can obtain a copy by calling our office.
       The following suggestions are ways you can make a difference in your community:

• In early January, ask your local high school when its Biology I textbook selection committee holds public hearings. Also, arrange to borrow its copy of Prentice Biology to study. If they stall, call us.
• Take all the friends you can with you to the Biology I textbook selection committee public hearing and sign up to testify. Point out the Prentice Biology's many unscientific, controversial and inflammatory passages.
• Stress to the superintendent that the book is a sure public relations disaster. He is politically sensitive and can influence the committee.
• If the committee chooses Prentice's Biology anyway, your local school board must still approve it. Before and after their meeting, ask school board members to direct the committee to recommend another book.
• The other Biology I texts are almost as bad as the Prentice. Peruse them all, so you can say you examined them. Instead of the Prentice, hold your nose and recommend Scott Foresman's Biology: The Web of Life.

      Often in our daily conversations, we hear statements which we know to be wrong, but have difficulty formulating an answer. All too often, the speakers are simply quoting some bumper-sticker rhetoric which comforts them both with its simplicity, and with its universal acceptance within the liberal, media-entertainment establishment.
       We thought it would be helpful to supply you with a few bumper stickers of your own, along with a few lines of explanation, so you know you are on solid ground. Our intent is not to incite arguments, but to enable you to jar pro-choice friends and acquaintances out of their comfort zone to make them think more deeply on this issue.

1. Not everything that is immoral must be illegal.
          That's true. But which ones should be? The argument will stump you only if you try to refute it. After all, it's true. Fortunately, it is also irrelevant. Morality is the ultimate foundation of law so while not everything immoral must be illegal, everything illegal is, theoretically at least, immoral. Abortion laws should reflect our moral obligation to protect innocent life, and that means deciding whether that unborn child is a human being worthy of protection. This is a decision most "pro-choice" people would rather avoid. Don't let them.

   "We always err on the side of life. If nobody can prove when life begins, that should be reason enough to protect the unborn throughout pregnancy."

2. The only way to prevent abortion is to change hearts and minds, not just outlaw abortion.
          Changing hearts and minds is the only way to prevent any crime. Again, this argument seems difficult to refute, since it is self-evidently true. But it is really irrelevant to law. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes pointed out, laws are not written for good people, they are written for bad people. The question is what do we value highly enough to protect it with our laws? In writing laws, we make moral choices. Don't let people avoid the question with cop-outs like this.
3. Outlawing abortion will only move it to the back alley.
          A lot of crimes are committed in back alleys. Should we legalize all of them? The inevitably of bad behavior is the reason we have laws. And if the ugly reality of illegal abortion is more frightening to women than the ugly reality of legal abortion, then maybe more of them will make the right choice.
4. RU-486 has rendered the question of abortion moot.
         Efficiency does not make killing any less wrong. Zyklon B was far faster, more effective and less painful to Holocaust victims than the carbon monoxide which preceded it. Did its development render the Nazi death camps moot? The efficiency with which we can kill only increases the horror of the act, and the urgency of preventing it.