Teresa was a 14-year-old from South Carolina when she came to New York City with her mother for a late term abortion in 1971. Her story is one of many testimonies of women who regret having abortions and have posted their experiences in detail on the Web site of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, which began in late 2003. I first became aware of this nonprofit organization when I went to Washington last year to cover the annual March for Life. This year, the terrible weather and my crippling arthritis kept me home, in body but not in spirit.

Not many New York women want to hear me discuss my pro-life views. They have been indoctrinated in the belief that abortion is a woman’s right. I get e-mail messages from women who have achieved high positions in the business and academic arenas, claiming I am anti-choice and anti-woman. I am amazed that these women, who are obviously intelligent, aren’t clued into the fact that it is men who have benefited the most from Roe v. Wade.

Most of the women I have met through pro-life activities are not pious or self-righteous. They are, in fact, women who have had abortions and have no illusions about what it has done to their lives. Now they have a chance to unburden themselves of their secrets and to warn other women about what the decision to kill a baby will mean to a mother for the rest of her life. I believe the voices of those pro-life women will have a greater impact on the hearts and minds of Americans than those of priests and politicians.

In a testimony entitled “Remembering My Son, ” Teresa writes:

It all was so traumatizing, I cannot remember if I was given the choice of adoption. At any rate, the procedure to have the abortion was arranged and plans were made. My mother and I a week or two later, flew to New York, where Planned Parenthood said this was the only legal and safe place to have an abortion. I do not know the amount that was paid.

The rest of her testimony is quite detailed, but the reason I selected hers to write about is that her legal abortion took place in New York in 1971, before Roe v. Wade. The hysteria about ending abortion rights mounted by Democrats like Senator Schumer against conservative judges nominated by President Bush has no basis in reality. The issue of abortion rights will simply revert back to the states. Women will always be able to travel to “blue states” such as New York to terminate their pregnancies.

Another element I noted in Teresa’s essay was that she saw the remains of her aborted child, a boy, and wrote that it was the only son she ever had. She was blessed, thankfully, with a daughter years later. Many of the women I know personally who are now in their late 50s and had an abortion are childless, and their own mothers, who were so anxious to rid their families of inconvenient grandchildren, never had the pleasure of knowing what joy our children’s children bring.

Yet somehow it is the women’s groups who laud the freedom we now “enjoy” over our bodies. How ironic. Roe v. Wade made the idea of “shotgun weddings” unnecessary. It also facilitated irresponsibility in sexual relations, reducing the sexual act to instinctive behavior rather than emotional commitment. Pray tell, how does that benefit women lives?

Frankenstein scientists have been salivating over the prospect of experimenting with human embryos in their quest to engineer an immortal being. How they must be rejoicing in observing our congressmen trolling for the women’s vote by pushing for budget money for research on embryonic stem cells.

In the 32 years since Jan. 21, 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, there have been more than 44,670,000 abortions. The enlightened Western Civilization has achieved and exceeded the vaunted zero population growth. The Catholic religion has always been blamed for the overpopulation of the planet, yet neither China nor India, the world’s most populous countries, is Catholic. The native-born majorities in France, Italy, Spain, and other Catholic nations are rapidly eroding, giving way to growing Islamic immigrant populations.

The passage of Roe v. Wade was built on a tissue of lies. Norma McCovey, aka Jane Roe, and Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of Naral, have testified to that. Intelligent women should remove their blinders, unplug their ears, and observe and listen to their sisters’ warning about the harm abortion does to women, men, their families, and our nation.