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Having an abortion is often an act of desperation by a girl or woman who feels it is the last, sometimes the only, option for her. Many pregnant women are convinced that continuing a crisis pregnancy and giving birth would make their personal situation materially and emotionally worse. With better education, resources and support, they would never have gotten pregnant in the first place.

Children and teen-agers need age-appropriate, comprehensive sex education. They need honest, straightforward dialogue with their parents and teachers about sex, sexuality, sexually transmitted disease, teen pregnancy and teen and single motherhood. Teens and unmarried adults need facts, not ideology, about the advantages of abstinence and the wisdom of contraception should they become sexually active. They need support, not horrible pictures. Many of them are living in horrible enough situations already.

How about if the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform takes photographs of incest as it happens? How about if the center focuses its clinical lens on predatory older males as they exploit young girls in the name of "love"? How about if the center publicizes photographs of beaten, starved or sexually abused children and infants, the innocent victims of unfit parents? How about the once-famous photographs of women dead from botched, illegal abortions? How about parading photographs of the tragic Andrea Yates, the mentally ill Texas woman whose dominating husband ignored doctors' advice and continued to impregnate her? Andrea Yates was so deranged by the time her fifth child was born that she drowned all of her children in the family bathtub. Russell Yates lamented at the children's funeral that he had hoped for a basketball team the fifth child was a girl. Andrea Yates faces life in a mental institution. Russell Yates divorced her, and has remarried.

Yes, these are all part of life's harsh reality, too, and make for equally repellent pictures. But the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform and others of its ilk are not interested in the pictures or stories of the born. Only the unborn. So it parades these images in the public square instead trying to fix the many societal problems that create them.

Contrary to what the center and other anti-choice groups would have you believe, no one is pro-abortion. Life isn't perfect, either. In a perfect world, every pregnant woman would welcome the birth of her child and every infant would be held by only loving arms. Reality is different.

The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform blows up giant pictures of fetuses and attempts to browbeat society the way Russell Yates bullied Andrea into having one more baby.

Supporters of reproductive choice look life in the face and acknowledge its complexity, understanding that many factors come into play during every pregnancy. Until society can end unwanted pregnancies, abortion should remain safe, legal and rare.

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