Planned Parenthood and Survivors' Guilt

Today I was working out in the fitness center of yet another hotel in my University of Pennsylvania Penn for Life t-shirt.  It made me think about the last couple of generations of college students.  Roe v. Wade passed in  1973. The students in college now have never lived in a time without legal, government sanctioned infanticide, in the name of freedom, in the name of fulfillment, in the name of women's rights?

These students are  a generation whose parents have not been shy or reserved about mentioning the children that they choose not to have for whatever reason.  Because my generation and their parent's generations have been so open, these children have survivors' guilt.  They wake each day with a thought deeply buried in their consciousness, wondering why they were the siblings that their parents chose to let live.  They wonder what was wrong with the missing siblings, or what was right about them.

Since this is also a generation that was raised in a time where we are not to speak of Judeo-Christian values in school or society, they are left to attribute there survival to chance or happenstance. 

So is it any mystery that this is the generation that operates 714 college chapters of Students for Life? Consider having a pro-life organization on a college campus in the 1970s or 1980s? Not really.  That this is the generation that has, in its search for meaning, rediscovered the phrase "there, but for the grace of God go I." That this is the generation that is investigating organizations that prosper from procedures such as abortion, and asking moral questions, not cultural questions.

Their survivors' guilt may just be the attitude that will generate the actions that save their children from feeling the same shame and uncertainty.  I am grateful for their action and voice.