USA TODAY US Edition

Opposing view: Americans are ready for meaningful limits

- Tony Perkins Tony Perkins is president of the Family Research Council.

In 1973, the Supreme Court believed it had resolved the abortion debate, but decades later it’s clear the court failed to settle the issue. Why? Abortion runs contrary to the laws of nature.

Abortion remains as controvers­ial as ever as shown by tens of thousands coming to Washington every year to the March for Life, marchers overwhelmi­ngly young and happy for whom it’s more of a celebratio­n than a political demonstrat­ion.

Polls have shown a steady rise in “pro-life” sentiment over the past two decades, even while “pro-choice” numbers fall.

After 51 million children have been legally aborted in this country, and the coarsening effects on society that have followed, Americans are ready for some meaningful limits. According to a Marist poll this month, 63% of Americans would ban abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy. And 92% of Republican­s and 61% of Democrats want “significan­t restrictio­ns” on abortions.

Why has the pro-life movement gained momentum? Well, science mostly. Black-and-white ultrasound­s are now the first pictures parents put up on the fridge, a daily reminder of the humanity of the unborn child.

The partial-birth abortion debate a decade ago forced the discussion out of the realm of political platitudes and onto the subject of humanity. Trial transcript­s were published, and the horror of this late-term abortion method was brought into the minds and the conscience of a nation.

In just the past seven years, more than 400 pro-life laws have been passed in states across the nation.

And every year on the steps of the Supreme Court, on the Roe v. Wade anniversar­y, the crowd of women holding signs that say “I Regret My Abortion” grows larger.

More Americans are coming to believe what America’s first feminists believed: That abortion is “the ultimate exploitati­on of women.”

No court can change the truth that a society that respects life is a safer and stronger society.

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