Roe v. Wade: Through a Daughter’s Eyes

Through my daughter’s eyes, I view Roe as a monumentally unjust historic event which has decimated her generation.

Maria V. Gallagher and Daughter

By Maria Gallagher, Legislative Director
PA Pro-Life Federation
National Right to Life

Editor’s note. This appears in the current digital edition of National Right to Life News. Please share this story and the entire contents of the 48-page issue with your pro-life family and friends.We all look at life from different perspectives. This is also true when we consider Roe v. Wade, the abominable Supreme Court ruling which has led to the deaths of more than 60 million preborn babies.

I look at Roe from the viewpoint of a daughter and as a mother of a daughter. At the time that my mother became pregnant with me, she and my father were facing financial ruin. My father had lost his job and, during the course of her pregnancy, my mother would be fired for the “offense” of being pregnant. The pressures my parents faced must have been tremendous.

If Roe had been the law of the land at that time, could I have been a statistic? Could my mother, in desperation, have turned to an abortionist during the depths of her heartache?

Thankfully, back in those days, the law protected me.

As it turned out, I was too young to be aware of the High Court’s cataclysmic decision back in 1973. And yet, perhaps, I saw the effects.

In my elementary school, it seemed the classes were smaller for the children younger than I. When I went to a store in a mall to make a purchase, I felt that I was not being given the respect I deserved, even though I was very young.

The fact is, the reverberations of Roe, like a pebble in a pond, could be felt well beyond the initial point of impact. I felt it at school and in my neighborhood—even if I could not trace its cause.

By the time I reached high school, I faced an abortion-saturated society. Rumors flew through the corridors of our school of students who had had one. Growing up during those times meant realizing that a terrible atrocity had been legalized and was taking place, perhaps thousands of times a year, in my hometown.

Thankfully, by the time I was blessed with my beautiful daughter, I had been volunteering in the pro-life movement for quite some time. So I knew the importance of raising her with a pro-life perspective.

When she was about six years old, she looked with wonder at a display of soft-touch fetal models at a pro-life educational display at a church festival. She lovingly held the realistic depictions of preborn babies at various stages of development. As we left the display, she insisted on running back a second time so she could catch another glimpse.

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