by Joleigh Little
Region Coordinator and Teens for Life Director, Wisconsin Right to Life
Numbers.
So not my thing.
I prefer letters that make words which become sentences. In fact, I love them. And while abortion can be explained in words, opposed in words and, eventually, eradicated with words, I don’t think it can be adequately understood without the numbers.
Knowing this, I tried to wrap my tiny fourteen year old brain around the numbers. It was 1985. I’d just marked the 12th anniversary of Roe v. Wade – my first as a full-fledged right-to-life advocate.
Our cold Wisconsin winter morphed into spring and one rainy Saturday when I was home alone I decided to try to not only understand the vastness of the abortion tragedy, but to help explain it to others.
I knew that abortion killed 1.5 million children a year (thankfully considerably lower now). I figured I would pull out the old stack of catalogs on our living room shelf and cut out the faces of the kids in the children’s clothing section. Logic dictated that after a good, hard day’s work I would be well on my way. My goal was a display banner that would show the tragedy of abortion.
A simple banner with 1.5 million faces on it. (I laugh now and understand the frustration my math teachers felt all those years.)
So I got out my scissors, stacked up three or four massive catalogs alongside my paper, glue and paintbrush, and I went at it. I cut carefully around tiny faces. I left entire legions of child models headless. I cut for hours, amassing what I was certain was a large dent in my project.
Once all of the catalogs were depleted, I decided to tally them up. I knew I’d probably have to borrow a few more catalogs to get the job done, but I was pretty sure I was well on my way. I counted the faces.
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