You Can't Abort Love.

• Author: Orient, Jane M.

WHEN I WAS YOUNG, popular music mostly was about love, in stark contrast to today's rap. "All you need is love," sang The Beatles. "You need somebody to love," is in a Jefferson Airplane number still popular 50-plus years later. No one needs love more than an expectant mother, but a frightened woman heading to an abortion clinic likely has learned that the father of her child does not love her and will abandon their child--and probably her, too, even if she aborts. Her parents, rather than being doting grandparents, might disown her--or so she fears. Her friends may be supportive, but only of the decision to abort. She fears interruption of her education or her career. If she cherishes hope of finding a husband who will love her for life, the prospects are probably less if she is a single mother.

However, she may not have considered that she is carrying the very person who probably will love her more than anyone else, for her whole life. Babies love their mommy. Her baby already is learning her heartbeat, her voice, and her smell, and will recognize and cling to her immediately upon arrival. Most mothers instantly fall in love with their baby and are ready to die for that child.

A 95-year-old mother told me a story I can never forget--one she might have never told anybody else. I usually made home visits, but her son prevailed upon her to come to my office for an electrocardiogram. She did not want the EKG, and she wanted her son out of the room. The story started out to be about living as an immigrant in New York in the 1920s. Life was hard, and she and her husband already had a baby when she found herself pregnant again. She was walking with a supportive girlfriend to an illegal abortion clinic. "I stopped. I asked myself what I was doing. I decided: I am not going to kill my baby. So, I went home and had my baby."

She pointed toward the waiting room: "Him!"

Without him, her life would have been immeasurably impoverished--and the world, too, as he was brilliant and made many valuable contributions. He helped her write a couple of books. Though he lived in another city, he visited her often in her old age and saw to her every need. He cooked the meals she liked and filled the freezer with them. Her first-bom, a daughter, just was not...