News flash, April 2, 2008: Florida House passes H.B 257 mandating pre-abortion ultrasound tests. Good news for Florida where health department statistics record almost 100,000 abortions annually.

It has been a long fight since Roe v. Wade.

As a freshman law student in 1973-74, I was introduced to Roe v. Wade through a paperback supplement to my hardbound constitutional law hornbook. I vaguely remember my professor suggesting that the subject was so profound that it justified this special supplement. Treating the case as just another in the deluge of cases we briefed for con-law, many of us never paused to consider the deeper societal implications of Roe v. Wade. I wish my professor had cried out, “Wake up, a liberal Supreme Court has just embraced the social experiment of abortion-on-demand.”

So, what if he had? It was all high philosophy at that point. The pro-abortion advocates now had their mandate to lead America into an age of reason, full of adult happiness free of unwanted pregnancy. Yet, what the pro-choice advocates delivered was a holocaust like no other before it, with residual adult grief crippling unknown numbers of American women.

What have we learned? To paraphrase Stalin, we’ve learned that a single death is a tragedy but a million deaths is merely a statistic.

Of course, there has been progress in the state houses and in Congress with laws requiring parental notification and banning partial-birth abortion. But this civil rights issue will not be solved by government mandates.

On the tenth anniversary of Roe v. Wade the Great Communicator framed the issue for us in his article for The Human Life Review entitled “Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation.”

In Reagan’s words:

What, then, is the real issue? I have often said that when we talk about abortion, we are talking about two lives — the life of the mother and the life of the unborn child. Why else do we call a pregnant woman a mother? I have also said that anyone who doesn't feel sure whether we are talking about a second human life should clearly give life the benefit of the doubt. If you don't know whether a body is alive or dead, you would never bury it. I think this consideration itself should be enough for all of us to insist on protecting the unborn.

I believe Reagan inherently knew that the solution was the mother, not the government, when he observed that, “Despite the formidable obstacles before us, we must not lose heart. This is not the first time our country has been divided by a Supreme Court decision that denied the value of certain human lives … we know that respect for the sacred value of human life is too deeply engrained in the hearts of our people to remain forever suppressed.”

And where else has God planted the “respect for the sacred value of human life” but the heart of the mother? And that’s where the “tipping point” has been found.

Twenty years post Roe v. Wade, after traveling the state visiting with other like-minded folks who had a heart for mothers in crisis, I helped incorporate our hometown’s crisis pregnancy center. These centers popped up about everywhere dishing out love in large quantities. Most have grown, diversified and prospered.

We somehow knew that these fledgling care centers would be the solution. Now, ultrasound technology has placed the ultimate tool in the hands of those who care the most. Fighting the legal battles to enforce HB 257 may be noble, but spending the dollars to put the technology in the hands of crisis pregnancy centers will liberate the “sacred value of human life … deeply engrained in the hearts of our people”—the mothers who the abortion industry are shamelessly convincing to suppress it.