By James W. Huston, Originally published June 2, 1991
January 1996 –Twenty-five percent of the high school graduating class of 1991 are dead.
They died in 1973, the year abortion was made legal. As the remaining 75% prepare for their summers after graduation and their futures, they might stop and reflect on the significance of being members of this class.
Vague complaints are heard from the Pentagon and corporate sources that the labor pool seems to be drying up. The number of 18-year-olds is forecast to decrease over the next few years. This seems to come as a surprise to those mentioning the statistics, as if some reverse Baby Boom took place from 1973 on. No mention is made that the primary reason for the decrease in 18-year-olds is that they were aborted 18 years ago.
The number of abortions in this country since 1973, 25 million, exceeds the total populations of Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming combined.
Why don’t we as a society discuss the loss of 10% of our population in the last 18 years? If an airplane crashes with 10 people on board it is national news. But the loss of 1.5 million students from the class of 1991 goes unmentioned, as if to do so is somehow in bad taste.
Who are these people who made up the other 25% of the class of 1991? Who would they have been? If we were able to read their DNA at the time of their being aborted we would be able to tell their sex, their hair color, whether they were more or less inclined to balding, and other individual characteristics. We will never have that chance.
We’ll never know which one of them might have been the star fullback on the football team or the scientist who would have discovered a cure for leukemia.
Some of them undoubtedly would have been poor. Some would have done poorly in school. Many of them would have been born into broken or abusive homes. A few would have had serious diseases and crippling congenital “defects.” Most would not have been National Merit Scholars or Rhodes Scholars. Most would not have gotten into the colleges of their choice.
They would have been just like the rest of the class of 1991 in diversity of abilities, skills, hopes and ideas. Their days would be filled with optimism and fear about the future. They would be seeking advice – ignoring some of it and listening to some. They would be wondering if they would ever get married and, if so, whether they had already met the person to whom they would ultimately give a vow of faithfulness for life. They would be wondering if they would have children, and if so how many and what would they look like.
But that 25% of this class will never have the opportunity to make good and bad decisions, to be happy or sad. They will never feel the touch of wind on their faces or look into the eyes of a child. They will never feel love.
As a member of the high school class of 1971 I had heard about abortion, but it was not something that was considered or discussed. No one had abortions and teen-age pregnancy was extremely rare. Yet it was my class and those after it that have accounted for 1.5 million abortions a year from 1973 through the present. Some of us have been against abortion since 1973, and many have been in favor of it, but most have been apathetic. We were in our childbearing years then. Now the class of 1991 is.
Twenty years after graduating from high school, my peers and I have left to the class of 1991 a legacy of 25 million abortions. It is a legacy that attempts to justify killing the unborn for the sake of convenience or sex selection. It is a legacy that says abortion through the entire pregnancy is acceptable and in fact should be paid for by the government. I hope the class of 1991 can do better.
They will have to decide for themselves whether abortion is good for this country or not. They will have to decide whether it is the taking of an innocent human life or the termination of so much tissue. They will find little guidance or clear thinking in the discussions of the issue in the media or by politicians. The debate has been reduced to name calling and posturing. The truths of abortion, the hard facts on all sides of the issue are so rarely voiced or heard that, when they are, it is considered an offensive intrusion into normality.
They will have to look beyond the superficial to discern the truth. If no analysis is done, they will be destined to continue the momentum of the status quo, aborting 1.5 million children a year. They must decide for themselves whether their children’s high school classes will also be missing 25% of their members each year.
Will they put their children through what they have gone through, losing brothers and sisters by the millions? I hope for society’s sake that they will not. The killing must stop. 
