I listen to the fighting in here about the cost of this war. The cost in human lives that is. Both Conservatives and Liberals loath the loss of life in the war on terror. On that much I am sure we can agree.

You might wonder where this number came from, seems a little high for the Iraq war. No, this number refers to the needless deaths from the War on Life. Since the passage of Roe v. Wade there have been, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), Planned Parenthood’s special research affiliate monitoring trends in the abortion industry" (www.nrlc.org), over 47 million terminated pregnancies in the United States.

But this is only part of the human cost of this war. Think for a moment of all those women who are now forced to suffer the pains of their decision. Think of the men who had to sit in silence and watch as their child was "terminated" because they had no rights to defend their children. Oh, the human toll here is much higher than 47 million. Many men, and I consider them the lucky ones, were probably never informed of the decision that was being made on their behalf, so at least they do not have to deal with the very real pains associated with the loss of a child.

I know, at this point a bra burning mama of the 60's is thinking, "child", it's not a "child", it's tissue, nothing more. Who is this man to sit here and lecture me on my body and my right to do with it what I please. Male pigs, trying to tell a woman what she can and can't do.

Well, I am a man, that much is true, but I am not telling you what you can and can not do with your body. I am just making you aware of the horrible cost associated with abortion. I am all for you having all the rights afforded any other human being in this country. What I am asking you to do is, use them responsibly. Abortion is not birth control, it is in fact the ending of a valuable life. Might not be valuable to you, but to someone out there waiting for a child to adopt it sure is. Birth control is really pregnancy control and this should be practiced by all women, married or not, who are not wanting a child. But once you get pregnant, it is no longer pregnancy control, it is ending a life. Along with that comes some very real issues, psycological, mental, physical and yes, sometimes spiritual issues that will have to be dealt with by the mother, the father and even the Dr. performing the "procedure" at time.

This is not a religious based article, and I am not trying to end Roe v. Wade, it is, at least for now, the law of the land. What I am wanting the reader to come away with from this article is the realization that everything you do produces a consequence. For many, the price of having an abortion is problems with friends and family, keeping relationships going with the father, getting on with a new relationship with another man after having gone through a procedure like this. Sometimes it can be even worse. The suicide rate for post abortive women is approx. 35 per 100,000 women, vs. 20 per 100,000 suffering from a miscarriage and just 6 per 100,000 who have given live birth. Live birth situations actually provide a lower suicide rate than those women who kill themselves who are not pregnant, running in at 12 per 100,000. (www.pregnantpause.org) (This site also notes some interesting facts on suicide rates world wide range from 1-4 % in Euope and the U.S. to 15% in Scandinavin countries and also points out that this is not proof that abortion causes suicide, so don't think that is what I am saying, I am just quoting a study, you do it all the time.)

The other side of the story is what we have lost because of these abortions. One, we might have lost the cure for cancer. (I use this line becasue the liberals use it to save the rain forest, well one of these kids might have been the one who went to the rain forest and actually found the cure) We might have lost the next Carl Sagan, Einstein, or Hawkins, maybe we just lost the next Star Jones, no great loss there but remember, she may still do something worth while. Maybe we have lost the kid who would have grown up to actually end war in the Middle East, or who could have come up with a plan for world peace, or better yet, the kids who was supposed to discover the new religion that all mankind could get behind. We definately lost 47 million tax payers who could have been paying in by now (at least some of them would have been tax payer age by now) to prop up the sacred cow of Liberalism, the Social Security Program, thus saving grandma from choosing between food and her medicine. Maybe all we lost was the next Bill Gate, you remember him, the guy who gave us this thing and the means to use it for this stuff.

Then again, maybe we lost nothing. Maybe all we did was save ourselves from the next Hitler, the next Manson, the next Andria Yates. Either way, we will never have the chance to know, their all dead. Sure would hate to get to Heaven or Zen or Shangrila or that place Scientology is selling and find out that we killed the one guy who would have created the alternative fuel source to destoy Halliburton and Exxon, or the guy who would finally get rid of all the Republicans by making them finally understand the liberal viewpoint with his carisma and charm.

Guess it's worth it to pay such a large price for your right to choose.

But what would I know, I'm just an Average American...