We Can Make Room

Compassion in this case doesn't mean amnesty, and it doesn't mean neglecting border security. It does mean finding a realistic way by which those who are here illegally, with effort on their part, can begin the long process of regularizing their status and achieving citizenship. So as to be fair to those who have been waiting patiently to come to this country legally, a compassionate process may include bringing in more legal immigrants more quickly than we had planned.

The basic question is whether we have room in this country for more children to be born and more immigrants to come in. One woman who had an abortion wrote in 1976, our nation's bicentennial, that "there just wasn't room" in her life for the child growing within her. Later, she realized that she could have made room. She wrote, "I have this ghost now. A very little ghost that only appears when I'm seeing something beautiful, like the full moon on the ocean last weekend. And the baby waves at me. And I wave at the baby."

In this month that brings George Washington's birthday, it's worth remembering a letter he wrote to one synagogue in 1789: "May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."

That should be our continuing goal for this nation. We can make room.

Rather than running from debates about abortion, we should take on those like Princeton Professor Peter Singer who say that unborn children can be killed because they lack higher mental capacities. We need to add a bit of vision to the debate. Why not destroy acorns because they are utterly lacking in material for chairs or houses? Several years ago, when I rose to the utmost level of my coaching abilities by becoming a Pony League assistant coach, I spent time with kids who didn't throw or catch all that well. The Singer doctrine would indicate that I was wasting my time, since they lacked higher baseball capacities. Of course, so did I.