What if these people never had been born...?

TheRichest.com, a website full of trivia and gossip that can really drain if not pollute your brain, has published a list of 8 famous people who narrowly avoided being aborted. Surely there are more, or at least people who have had lives that have been rich for themselves and have enriched others. But the fame of these people underscores the fact that abortion robs not only the baby of a life, but the rest of us of the wonderful things they might accomplish.

These people are:

• Sean Lennon
• Nick Cannon (the one name I didn't recognize because I don't follow pop culture much - Mariah Carey's husband, which you all might know)
• Tim Tebow
• Cher
• Justin Bieber
• Celine Dion
• Steve Jobs
• Pope St. John Paul II

You can go read their stories at TheRichest.

That article, between the lines, allows several conclusions:

• The very availability of abortion makes considering it an obligation. I have heard of families faced with an unintended or difficult pregnancy where the first thing decided was, "Well, you're NOT getting an abortion!" I mean, really, the idea that it is the first thing considered, instead of being the last resort, even by people who would not choose it, really says something about our society.
• These are only 8 of the most famous to people in the US, although many have international reputations. How many others are unsung or obscure but nonetheless accomplishing great things? Of the tens of millions aborted in the last 40 years in the US alone, how many others have we been deprived of? How many in the hundreds of millions worldwide?
• The probabilities used in calculating whether an abortion makes sense are just that. Probabilities. John Paul II would "probably" have had a hard short life with heart problems, but he didn't. Celine Dion's family was poor, and another child (her) would have been a big hardship. If it's an 80% chance of a bad outcome for the unborn child or his family, that sounds pretty much like a no-brainer for an abortion - but what is lost in that 20%?
• It's never too late to change your mind, prior to getting the procedure.

I said the other day that the idea of "love your neighbor as yourself" means considering all other human beings, even the unborn, and so connected to ourselves as "to be" ourselves.

And then there's that video of a woman undergoing an abortion and being proud of it. It was "right for her." Her and what she called her "awesome" power to make a life - and destroy it. And what exactly did she destroy? A great singer? A visionary entrepreneur? A powerful saint? What gives her that right?

And is an abortion really a private act after all, when it affects the rest of us so much?